One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

637 Words3 Pages
Being in conformity means for people to be in compliance, accordance or agreement. In the book “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, conformity seems to be constant through out the characters. You don’t see much individualism in the men seeing how everyone manages to get through the day with the help of others in their “gang”. “A guard can’t get people to budge even in working hours, but a squad leader can tell his men to get on with the job even during the break and they’ll do it. Because he’s the one who feeds them and he’d never make them work for nothing” (Solzhenitsyn, 87). This quote shows the trust and tolerance between “gang 104” leaders and peers, witch helps grow to build a relationship necessary for day to day living. Not only was it critical to build and have a relationship with the members of your gang, but it was also important to have the same connection with your squad leader. “A clever squad leader was one who concentrated on the work report. That was what kept the men fed” (Solzhenitsyn, 59). In their special prison the gangs relied on their squad leader to give a good work report weather the work was really done or not, and then depended on their peers to get that work done and make it happen. If one person decided that they weren’t going to do anything that day, then that would fall on the whole team including your squad leader. If your squad leader was on your side the way Tiurin was for his gang than that was a privilege that you wanted to keep. You either all ate or all of you went hungry. There was no man for themselves, everyone had each others backs and that was the way it had to be in order to survive. The important thing about conformity was that you weren’t always given all the right tools to do the job so when you do what you have to do to get the job done it helps to know that your “gang” and squad leader
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