One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is difficult to classify in terms of traditional literary genres. Solzhenitsyn himself has remarked on the disappearance of the traditional boundaries between genres and the lack of interest in "form" within contemporary Russian literature. Commenting on the form of the work, he states that it is a mixture, something between a short story (Russian: rasskaz) and a story (Russian: povest). A povest is defined as "what we frequently call a novel: where there are several story lines and even an almost obligatory temporal expanse." One Day, on the other hand, is more of a short story in the sense that it concentrates mainly on one protagonist and on one episode in his life, but the fact that this one day is seen as being typical of a large segment of Ivan's life, as well as being a description of a number of different human fates, also places the work in the genre of the novel.
In keeping with its short story form, there is no formal subdivision into chapters, but we can distinguish twenty-four distinct episodes which make up Ivan's day. These episodes have been given "titles" in this set of Notes for the sake of easy reference to any of the twenty-four episodes.
The episodes are arranged thematically around the three main areas of concern for a typical prisoner: food, work, and the eternal battle against the cruel camp authorities. Formally, the episodes — one might properly call many of them vignettes — are arranged in such a way that scenes describing the harsh camp environment which is a threat to Ivan's survival alternate with episodes which depict his overcoming these threats, showing Ivan's small triumphs over the inhumane prison system.
