This is the cover to the film for the novel. It is a scene of the winter landscape in which Ivan is inhabiting along with his fellow zeks (convicts). It all returns to Russia and its climate. Russia is a cold land with a proud heritage. Its people are strong and bred with a sense of nationalism. Though most of the prisoners are not criminals, merely placed there as opponents to Stalin’s regime, they are not bitter or angry at their homeland. The quickness of this book is in its pacing, like its environment, it takes time for snow to fall and accumulate. It takes time for trees to grow and resources to gather and be harvested. This book follows the pace of a day, it is not a laborous  all-encompassing account, but merely a patient 24 hours. This book is written like the majority of its people, simple but necessary, nothing wasted, nothing wanted.

My analogy is travelling in an extreme winter climate. Travelling in such conditions is not easy, it is hard drudging work. You must fight the elements for every inch, and depend upon your gear and preparation to survive the journey. I use Macnab’s principle of three as a design element. Three is about bringing back one (unity) and two (duality) into a balance. Travel in such regions looks like nothingness, however the somethingness is obtained from comparison with the rest of the world. These regions are beautiful for their majestic openness and vibrant snow landscapes. The same cannot be said of the environment Ivan lives in, it is a harsh winter cemetry that tries to force out the interloping humans. Duality is about creating conflict and then returning toward a resolution. The conflict is the life or travel across such a region, however the resolution is survival.

The number three brings solution to the conflict of division by presenting a third point of balance. The harmonic product of the action of unity upon duality creates a third possibility, a separate entity that is a unique communication of wholeness and expresses the growth of unity within itself. Three is also the number of aspiration, and countless logos use the triangular shape to represent a focal point of upward aspiration, or three elements to underscore the process of transition to completion. Threeness is the principle of duality being braided back into the greater whole via a third component.

Three returns one and two back into a balance. Ivan’s action keeps him fed and useful. Were he to stop working, he would die. His crew would stop looking out for him, and the camp would not feed him for he is useless, a broken tool. We are intimately connected to Ivan’s thoughts through the narrator, and the pace is set by the organized camp life. To view this work, you must look at the unity (1) and duality (2) within the work. The duality is the nature of Ivan and Alexander, as shown in my brand discussion. To see unity, you have to look at nothingness, and from there somethingness can emerge. Ivan is housed in nothingness, but from that somethingness emerges by how he lives on in a dehumanizing environment.

The quickness is the action, most of the book has a very measured pace that is slow but steady like Ivan, however he must think quickly at times. When Ivan is being searched, he must think of a way to hide his scrap of hacksaw blade, so he holds out both gloves in one hand, which is the only searched. The pace is also that of a day everyone lives, it begins, it has a middle, and it ends. The beginning is breakfast and preparation for work, the middle work, and the end dinner and free time.

This image is my attempt to show a sunset or sunrise; as the two are very similar but also very different. One signifies the openning of the day, the other the end of the same day. During the day, your options are open; you have choices and decisions to make. However, we live day by day, in the present. Every day, every night, they go by slowly but also quickly, so often and commonplace we hardly notice their passing at times. Then you remember, then you look back and see the change, your boy was just a baby looking to you for life and love, and now hes 21 and no longer dependent on you. Eventually you become dependent on him, and the cycle ends. Ivan is shown in this one day, this one snapshot of his life as it is now, and this is all we have to go on. This day, he neither hates nor loves it, merely lives it like we all do without thought.

The Butterfly Effect is a movie about alternate endings. The main character continually shifts through events in his life, making small adjustments with far reaching effects. Nothing he does works out like he intends, which shows the multiplicity Calvino thrives upon. Eventually the main character in this movie must decide upon a present without interfering in the past. Macnab’s principle of eight speaks of infinity, but also of the completion of the parts of a cycle that is 7 toward the final ending 8. So the main character in The Butterfly Effect must complete the cycle set in motion by his changing the past, so too must Ivan finish the cycle set in motion by his very survival and continued existence.

While seven addresses the individual stages of a process, eight brings us full circle to completion of a process. The digit 8, shown on its side, is also the symbol for infinity. The two connected circles of the Mobius strip symbol make sense for the quality of wholeness, with an added twist at its center to represent the dimensional change that occurs when energy transforms. Infinity expresses all, including the reality that energy and matter are interdependent: two sides of one coin.  Completion is about a cycle coming full circle to the beginning to make the whole.

Within this work, the completion is of the day. However, this is a piece in a larger cycle, within an even larger cycle. The end of this story is merely the beginning of another day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. I find this day to be exemplary of every day he has taken within this camp, all (8*365=) 2920 of them. Eight for Macnab can also bring about infinity, and that is what multiplicity is about.

Within this work, the multiplicity is found in the decisions made by the character Ivan and his supporting cast. The narrator closely follows Ivan’s thoughts, actions, and experiences through free indirect discourse. It is an anonymous fellow, who only adds detail beyond what Ivan might know when it is important to the tale, such as when the medic is writing a poem, something an uneducated man like Ivan wouldn’t understand.

This is a photo of a gulag cell. This is not like the cell Ivan lived in, he was in a barracks, however I’m certain the conditions weren’t much nicer. When talking of his living conditions, Ivan speaks of resources; having the space closest to the stove, or stitching food into his bed to hide it. Ivan has called his bunk home for 8 years, with 2 to go, and that is his home now. His home is no longer thought of as where his family lives, his home is that bunk, huddled with many other forgotten men, all striving and yearning for something beyond the gulag. What that is, they are no longer certain, life beyond the prison seems a fantasy. They only have fragments of what they once had, but that is what they live for, that chance to recapture what once was.

This is a poster of the perhaps infamous mission accomplished speech/poster. Bush announced an end to the war and a job well done, however nothing was finished except open conflict with the Iraqi Republican Guard. Instead we were left with a lengthy occupation that only led to more deaths and costs for both nations. This book only details a single day, one part of a whole life. The analogy is that nothing is accomplished in either, both have so much more left to do, left to complete. I find myself drawn to the similiarities in an occupation of Iraq, perhaps a lack of freedom felt by many Iraqi’s, and the freedoms Ivan must sacrifice as an inmate.