Men Have Forgotten God

        Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. “Men Have Forgotten God.” In College Composition Workshop, by James A. Chapman, 139-143. 2nd ed. Pensacola, Fl: A Beka Book, 2016.

Critique of “Men Have Forgotten God”

        “Men Have Forgotten God” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells about how the world is on the verge of collapse and how it got to the point of collapse because men have forgotten God which is very true even to this day. He first explains how Russia use to believe in God and how it finally got taken over by militant atheism or better know as communism. He then talks about how religious families were persecuted. Although in later years the church was tolerated to help gain support for the war against Hitler and it is still tolerated today for the sake of propaganda for the West. He goes on to say that many people are still persecuted for their beliefs but underneath all of the communism and terror there are still millions of believers. He says that the West is the same but it yielded its results from the historical evolution of religious wars and just turning away from the meaning of life. In the end of his article he says that through every decade it gets worse and worse and there seems to be no way out but in such trials comes the highest gifts to the human spirit.

        His writing style is very good. One can really see how the time progressive through the years in his article and how we got from a religious society into the godless society we are in today. He use many good examples and explanations throughout to help guide the reader into his points such as: “For tens of millions of laymen access to Church was blocked, and they were forbidden to bring up their children in the faith:” to bring up that the Russian government persecuted the church. He uses good words that are easy to understand like; annihilate, militarized, cynically, rampaged, formidably, and bristles which all give examples of how well schooled he was giving credibility to his writing.

        He kind of blames the West for what happened throughout the world and how everything is going into the godless society.  His statement, “The West did not perceive that this was in fact the beginning of a lengthy process that spells disaster for the whole world; indeed the West has done a good deal to help the process along.” it feels as if it was the West job to keep the nations from eating themselves apart. Although that might not be what he was saying it just comes across that way and there may be many more explanations for that sentences that make a lot more sense.