Reveille to Roll Call pages 17-37:

At five o'clock in the morning, the reveille sounds, and Ivan Denisovich Shukhov awakens in the freezing cold barracks of a Soviet prison camp. Usually, he gets up immediately because the next ninety minutes, before work begins, are his own. He can make money by sewing mittens, bringing someone his valenki (felt boots), or helping in the mess hall. In the mess hall, however, you are always tempted to lick out of someone's leftover bowl, and Shukhov remembers Kuziomin, an old prisoner who had told him and other newcomers that those who lick out others bowls, count on doctors to save them, or rat others out don't survive in these camps on the taiga. Shukhov knows that the squealers do survive, just at the expense of someone else's blood.

But this morning, Shukhov, having felt sick all night, remains in bed a while longer, wrapped in his coat and a blanket. He listens as Tiurin, the squad leader, and his deputy Pavlo, get up, and remembers that their squad might be sent to work on the "Socialist Way of Life" settlement, in open country with snowdrifts and no way to get warm. Ivan thinks that "One-and-a-Half" Ivan, the nicest guard, will be on duty so he won't get in trouble, and listens as Pavlo returns, complaining that they've been shorted on their bread rations by the supply depot. Just then, another guard, the Tartar, marches in and rips Ivan's blanket out. He sentences him to three days penalty with work, which Ivan knows is better than "without work," because you are kept too busy to think and given food and warmth. Nonetheless, as he dresses and follows the Tartar to the camp commandant's office, Shukhov is upset for being undeservedly punished, since all other days he gets up immediately.

Shukhov follows the Tartar to the guardhouse and into the guardroom. Scrubbing the guardroom floor had been the job of a special prisoner, a staff orderly, who wasn't sent to work outside the camp and having gotten a big head, didn't come to scrub the floor now when called. Realizing he is just there to scrub the floor and leave - without three days of punishment - Shukhov thanks the Tartar and sets out with the bucket to the well. He passes several squad leaders near the official thermometer, arguing that it's fixed and doesn't show the real temperature. Today it registers 17 _ below zero, and 41 degrees below zero is considered too cold to work.

Back at the guardroom, the Tartar is gone, and a group of guards argues about the cereal they will receive during the winter. Shukhov takes off his valenki so that they won't get wet while he washes the floor. He is grateful for them, for there are times he has only had rope sandals or galoshes made of tire treads, but this past October he had received a pair of hard leather boots. When the valenki were handed out in December, he was thrilled, but it was decreed each prisoner could only have one pair of footwear, and he'd had to return the boots and keep the valenki for the winter. Pouring lots of water on the floor because it is so dirty, Shukhov angers the guards, who ask if he ever saw his wife scrub the flooor. Shukhov says he hasn't seen his wife since 1941 and barely remembers her. Knowing these guards don't want and wouldn't recognize quality, Shukhov merely wets the floor with a damp rag rather than giving it a thorough washing.

Though he wants to find time to go to the dispensary, Shukhov first heads to the mess hall, where he is relieved to find no line or crowd outside. Inside, he pushes past crowds of men eating their oatmeal and stew to find that Fetiukov, who is lower than him in the unofficial hierarchy of their squad, saving his meal for him. The few minutes that mealtimes take are the only times, except sleep, when prisoners live for themselves, and Shukhov takes his time eating his cold stew of black cabbage and bony fish and his magara, Chinese oatmeal that is more like yellow grass than cereal. He eats all this with a spoon that he cast himself in 1944, which he carries in his boot for safekeeping, but avoids fish eyes floating loose in the stew and saves his bread for later.

Leaving the mess hall, it is still dark, but Shukhov can tell that it is near roll call. He avoids the Tartar, knowing that it is best to be inconspicuous and seen only in groups, to avoid extra tasks or punishment. Though he realizes he had planned to meet the Lett to buy some tobacco, the dispensary is nearby and he continues on to there. Only a young prisoner/medical assistant Kolya Vdovushkin is on duty, surreptitiously writing poetry, and he tells Shukhov that the sick list went out last night. But Shukhov insists that he feels "ill all over" and didn't last night, and the medical assistant gives him a thermometer, which he puts in his armpit to take his temperature.

Shukhov finds sitting still and quiet for five minutes a strange experience. He remembers back during the war when his jaw was smashed and he had the opportunity to stay in the hospital on the banks of the River Lovat for five days but instead volunteered, like an idiot, to go back to the front. Now, he dreams of being sick enough to lie in bed for two or three weeks, but suddenly remembers that the new doctor, Stepan Grigorych, devises tasks for all the patients who can stand on their feet, seeing work as good medicine for illness. Stepan Grigorych had advised Vdovushkin, who was actually a literature student, to identify himself as a medical assistant to therefore give him the opportunity to do the writing in prison he had no chance to do in the outside world.

Shukhov's temperature is 99.2, and Vdovushkin tells him he'll have to stay behind at his own risk; if the doctor doesn't exempt him for illness, he'll be locked up. Shukhov leaves to go work, returning first to the barracks, where Pavlo gives him his break ration with a spoonful of sugar on top. He sticks half the bread in a pocket he has sewed under his jacket, and rushes to hide the rest of the bread in a hole in his mattress, which he quickly sews up with a needle he keeps hidden in his hat. He has just finished when Tiurin calls the squad to go out. The men trample out slowly and deliberately, into weather so cold no one even wants to speak.

Analysis

One of the tasks which Solzhenitsyn undertakes in representing the life of a political prisoner in a forced labor camp - a life he himself endured under an eight-year sentence under Stalin - is a demonstration of the camp's effect on the prisoner's humanity. Solzhenitsyn's book was published in 1962, at a time when Khrushchev, then premier of the Soviet Union, was actively seeking to break with Stalin's legacy and to condemn the system of his predecessor. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, while based on Solzhenitsyn's own experiences, was therefore also a propagandistic tool in Khrushchev's campaign for "destalinization." As such, Solzhenitsyn's demonstration of the effects of the Stalinist system upon the individual worker aid in condemning Stalin's practices.

Solzhenitsyn demonstrates, through repeated examples, the ways in which internment in a "special" camp robs the individual of his humanity. The power of these examples is increased by Solzhenitsyn's repeated use of understatement. For Shukhov and his fellow prisoners, this loss of humanity has become so commonplace as to cease to outwardly upset them. For example, when the guard taunts Shukhov about the way in which he washes the floor, saying, "Didn't you ever watch your wife scrub the floor, pig?" Shukhov responds somewhat sarcastically, saying, "I was taken from my wife in forty-one, citizen chief. I've forgotten what she was like." This matter-of-fact response reminds the reader - who has not seen Shukhov missing his wife or even thinking about her at any other time that morning - of the life Shukhov has lost. The understatement and admission that he has forgotten what his wife was like is more disturbing than any depiction of Shukhov missing his wife because it demonstrates the ways in which his long prison sentence has altered him and robbed him of basic human responses.

Similarly, we see an example of stolen humanity in the mess hall scene. "There at the table, before dipping his spoon in, a young man crossed himself. A West Ukrainian, that meant, and a new arrival too," Solzhenitsyn writes. "As for the Russians, they'd forgotten which hand to cross themselves with." Again, Solzhenitsyn demonstrates the destructive power of the camp system on the human spirit not through external abuses imposed upon the prisoners by the guards but through the prisoner's own internalized responses to this lengthy imprisonment. Solzhenitsyn's morality, as appears in his books, was based on deeply held religious beliefs - beliefs which under the Soviet government he was unable to make known. This loss of religion, which might otherwise provide a panacea for the hopelessness of the camps, is yet another example of the Stalinist system's abuse not only of human bodies but of human souls.

While Shukhov provides the main alter-ego for Solzhenitsyn in this novel, other prisoners also mirror aspects of the writer's life and beliefs. Alyosha, the Baptist, for example, reads a half-copied New Testament in a notebook he hides in the wall. Solzhenitsyn himself later spoke of his belief in God as helping him survive the camps. Vdovushkin, the medical assistant, surreptitiously writes poetry during his sentence. Solzhenitsyn spoke of composing verses by heart in his head while incarcerated. In both cases, the two characters - like the author - defy authority and cling to the aspects of their previous life which allow them to maintain their humanity and survive.

The question of whether humanity is necessary or even beneficial to survival is touched upon when Shukhov recalls "Kuziomin‹a hard bitten prisoner who had already been in for twelve years by 1943" who told himself and other new prisoners about the types of people who manage to live. "Those who lick other men's leftovers, those who count on the doctors to pull them through, and those who squeal on their buddies," he says, do not survive. Though Shukhov knows that the squealers do survive - at the cost of their own humanity - he respects and agrees with most of Kuziomin's statement. For Shukhov, avoiding the before-breakfast mess hall, where he might be tempted to lick out another man's bowl, is a significant step towards maintaining his humanity and surviving his sentence.

For Solzhenitsyn, adept in the use of understatement, what appear to the reader to be small actions take on enormous significance in the prison camp. Shukhov, despite the bitter cold and despite other prisoners' practice of leaving their hats on in the mess hall, always removes his hat before eating. This recognition of the practices and decorum of his previous life may not have any immediate effect but it allows Shukhov to retain respect for himself as a man. The simple acts of removing one's hat before a meal or crossing oneself are acts of defiance to a system that seeks to turn a thinking, feeling human being into a senseless worker.

Shukhov and his fellow prisoners exist in a prison camp where their bodies, their labor, and even their language are controlled by authorities. No longer citizens of the Soviet Union, they are not allowed to call the guards "comrade" but must refer to them as "citizen," thus marking through their very language their recognition of their inferior status. Similarly, the requirement that all prisoners doff their hats to guards when passing them in the paths of the camp forces the prisoners to recognize their inferior, powerless status. How then, in an environment in which their every move and word is controlled and monitored, can a prisoner maintain his freedom and humanity?

That is the very question that Solzhenitsyn asks and answers with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His answer, we see, is at its heart existentialist. Like Sisyphus, whose punishment is the classical underworld is to continually push a rock up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom to be pushed up again, Shukhov finds freedom in the certainty of his punishment. Sisyphus is free - free to think whatever he wants - when he walks down the hill to retrieve the rock. Solzhenitsyn similarly finds opportunities for freedom in Shukhov's mind, which ultimately cannot be touched or controlled by the authorities as his body can. Shukhov "always got up at once, for the next ninety minutes, until they assembled for work, belonged to him, not to the authorities." Similarly, Shukhov "ate [his cold stew] with his usual slow concentrationŠApart from sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is the ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five minutes over dinner, and five at supper."

Just as small actions have enormous significance so too do small objects. Shukhov's spoon - "his little baby" - is such an object. Like Shukhov's insistence on removing his hat at the table and not stooping to lick bowls or eat fish eyes, the spoon symbolizes his humanity. The spoon, which "had been with him his whole time in the North," which "he'd castŠwith his own hands," is the only thing in the camp which Shukhov truly owns. In a Stalinist communist society, in which the government sought to destroy the notion of all private property, this ownership, even of a spoon, is significant. In the camp, where Shukhov cannot even call his clothing or boots his own, this spoon marks him as an autonomous individual. Shukhov has had this spoon since the first years of his imprisonment, since "Ust-Izhma 1944," when Kuziomin taught him how to survive in the camps. His continued efforts to protect his spoon, secreting it in his boot, are metaphoric efforts to protect his own humanity.

In this first part of the book and Shukhov's day, one can recognize a recurrence of significant numbers. Shukhov was taken from his wife in '41. The temperature required for work to be called of is negative 41 degrees. Shukhov's squad in the camp is 104. In 1959, when he completed the book, Solzhenitsyn was 41 years old.

Roll Call to Work Assignments pages 38-58:

The squad follows Tiurin through the bitter cold to their old place in the column. Shukhov realizes that Tiurin must have bribed someone with salt pork in order to keep the squad from having to work at the "Socialist Way of Life" settlement. The guard notes that Tiurin has one man absent on sick leave that day, and the members of the squad realize that it is Panteleyev who has stayed behind - not because he is actually sick but because he has been secretly called by the security boys to squeal on someone. Shukhov remembers that he needs to have his number touched up - if it is too light, he can be thrown in the guardhouse - and he makes his way to an old man, one of three artists who paint pictures for the authorities and touch up numbers at roll call. When the old man is done, Shukhov walks over to Tsezar, a member of his squad who is smoking a cigarette and stands next to him, staring past him. Fetiukov is greedy and stares right at Tsezar's mouth and finally demands a puff. Because of that Tsezar gives the butt to Shukhov to smoke.

As he is smoking, Shukhov hears someone shout that the guards are stripping them all the way to their undershirts to search them. Lieutenant Volkovi, the security chief, who scares both prisoners and guards, is supervising the search. When he came to the camp in '49, he used to carry a thick leather whip with him, which he used to lash those who stood in a group, rather than a line, at evening count. The guards are usually lenient at morning roll call because there isn't much to take out of the camp. The authorities used to be afraid of the prisoners stealing their bread ration and built a box in which each squad's bread was carried in, until three prisoners escaped and took a case of bread with them. Today, they are searching the prisoners to make sure they are not wearing civvies under their outfits, since each man is only allowed to wear the shirt and undershirt assigned to him. When it comes time for the 104th to be frisked, the guards ease up a bit, because a gap has developed in the ranks. Shukhov does not worry because he is in regulation dress.

Tsezar is found to be wearing a flannel vest, however, and Buinovsky is wearing a vest or cummerbund. Buinovsky, a former Navy commander who has been in the camp less than three months, protests, saying that the guards are violating Article Nine of the Criminal Code and are not behaving like communists. For that, Volkovi sentences him to ten days in the guardhouse, beginning in the evening so that his labor won't be wasted that day. Shukhov's back aches and he is cold from opening his clothes, as the escorts begin to call the prisoners forward. In ranks of five, they pass multiple stations, manned by officers who count them at each one. A guard who misses a head must fill it with his own. Beyond the camp boundary in the heaviest cold, Shukhov ties a piece of rag around his face and pulls the brim of his hat down so that only his eyes are exposed. He rubs his hands as the chief of the escort guard recites the "morning prayer" reminding the prisoners that stepping to the left or right will be considered an attempt to escape.

Flanked by escorts carrying machine guns, the prisoners march through the cold, their hands behind their backs and eyes trained on the ground. Shukhov worries about his hidden bread, the dispensary, Buinovsky, and Tsezar as he walks. Having not eaten his bread in the morning, he is unsatisfied. As the column passes the wood-pressing factory, the workers' settlement, the new club, and finally out into the windy steppe, Shukhov thinks of the letter he will write to his family. It is now 1951, and he has been gone since '41, back when no one in Temnenovo had a radio and he had learned about the war at the post office in Polomnya. Now all the cottages have radios, and there is little sense in writing because he has more in common with his fellow prisoners than his family. The last time Shukhov wrote a letter was in July, and even when he was a prisoner at Ust-Izhma, where he was allowed to write once a month, he only wrote twice a year.

When Shukhov's wife writes to him, she tells him of routine occurrences on the kolkhoz. What Shukhov does not understand is how the kolkhoz hadn't grown at all since the war. Half of the men didn't come back and of those that did, many live in the village and work on the side. Shukhov cannot understand men not working in their own village, but his wife explains that they come back to help with the haymaking and harvesting but otherwise travel around, even on airplanes, painting carpets which are sold for 50 rubles each. They use stencils and can make any old sheet into a beautiful carpet, and Shukhov's wife wants him to become a carpet painter when he returns. Though prison has kept him from making many plans for the future, Shukhov knows that he doesn't want to have to grease palms the way a carpet painter must. He has not bribed anyone in prison and thinks he would prefer to be a plumber, carpenter, or repairman - unless the authorities deprive him of his civil rights and keep him from going home at the end of his sentence.

The column reaches the power plant site and stops. They must wait until all the guards are in their guard towers before they enter. Shukhov's back aches, and he looks at Tiurin, whom he has known since Ust-Izhma. A good squad leader, like Tiurin, can give a man a second life. Shukhov decides not to interrupt his "lofty thoughts" to ask about the day's work. Finally, the guards open the gates, and the prisoners begin to enter, again being counted, at five past eight. All the prisoners pick up scraps of firewood as they enter, and Tsezar goes to his cushy office job. Pavlo is sent somewhere by Tiurin as well. The sun rises above an area covered with trenches, foundations, machinery, and scrap metal. That moment, before they receive their work assignments, still belongs to the prisoners, and they look for somewhere warm to sit. The 104th goes into the big room in the uncompleted machine shop. It is heated with coal to help the cement slabs set, but the 38th, who set the slabs, won't let them near the stove. The 104th find places to sit in the corner to keep warm.

Shukhov finds a seat on the edge of the wooden form and realizes it did not good to save his bread. It is five hours from dinner, and he is hungry. He takes off his mittens, unwraps the now-frozen rag from his face, and begins to eat the bread, which had been kept warm close to his body. He thinks of all the food - potatoes, oatmeal, meat, milk - he had to eat in his village and how he now eats this black bread so slowly, savoring every crumb, for the past eight years. Two Estonians, close as brothers, though they met in the 104th sit near Shukhov, sharing a cigarette. Shukhov has never met a bad Estonian. Nearly everyone sits without speaking. Fetiukov has collected cigarette butts, even from spittoons and now filters the tobacco onto a piece of paper. Buinovsky tells him he will get a syphilitic lip doing that, and Fetiukov, judging by his own low standards, says that after eight years in the camp, he'll be doing the same thing.

Senka Klevshin, an unlucky man whose eardrum had been smashed in '41 and who survived Buchenwald only to be sent to the camp in Soviet Union, thinks they are talking about the frisking and tells Buinovsky he showed too much pride. Alyosha, meanwhile, sits praying. Shukhov eats nearly all his bread, saving a piece of crust to use as a spoon, and prepares for work as the 38th begins work. Tiurin has not yet returned, and the 104th feels lucky about their free time. Kilgas the Lett remarks on how long it's been since a snowstorm, when they don't have to work, mostly because the authorities are worried about prisoners escaping rather than freezing to death. Though there is often no bread or hot food during snow storms and the work has to be made up later on Sundays, the men still look forward to snowstorms. Just then, Tiurin walks in, looking gloomy, and the squad knows that it is time to work.

Analysis

One aspect of Solzhenitsyn's writing that would come to characterize his novels is his ability to depict a cross-section of Russian society. In effect, the camp in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich functions as a microcosm for Soviet society under Stalin. In Shukhov's squad itself, Solzhenitsyn depicts a variety of men of different ages, nationalities, and social backgrounds. Shukhov himself is a Russian peasant. In his squad are the two Estonians, a Lett, a Baptist, a former naval Captain, and men from many walks of life. Though Solzhenitsyn himself was a university-educated intellectual - like Vdovushkin, the medical assistant who writes poetry - at the time of his own prison camp sentence, he tells the story of this one day through the eyes of a peasant.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is most likely a composite of many men Solzhenitsyn knew in the camps. After the book's publication in fact, many men claimed that they were the real-life inspiration for Shukhov. Others who had served in the camp with Solzhenitsyn acknowledge that there was at least one man like Shukhov in every squad. In that sense, then, Shukhov is an archetype. He is the common worker whom Communism's ideals seek to empower. Even his first name, Ivan (Russian for John) is the most common of Russian men's names. In telling his story from the point of view of Shukhov rather than himself, Solzhenitsyn makes a political as well as literary statement. In the form of Shukhov, as the reader follows him through his day, the effect of the abuses of the Stalinist system on the common man become readily and chillingly apparent.

Solzhenitsyn's choice of Shukhov as his protagonist has unavoidable effects on his narration. Shukhov is a simple, uneducated peasant, used to withstanding hardships and physical labor even in his life before the war and his incarceration in the camps. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, he is not the type of man to ruminate on the philosophical and moral meanings of camp life. Rather, his goal is simply to survive and if possible, his human dignity intact. It is significant, therefore, that Solzhenitsyn chooses to tell his story in the third person, rather than in the first person from Shukhov's point of view. Though the opinions of other characters and observances of the world around him are provided to the reader primarily through Shukhov's eyes, the choice of first person narration allows Solzhenitsyn to present experiences and viewpoints beyond that of this simple peasant. Therefore, the reader gains access to the life histories of characters like the unlucky deaf Senka, Captain Buinovksy, and Vdovushkin, and sees the effect of the camps of a wide swath of Soviet society.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has been called an apprentice novel. It was the first book that Solzhenitsyn published, and in it, he worked out themes and concerns which he would address with more sophistication in future novels. One such subject is the fate of the Russian village under the Stalinist system, which would form the subject matter for "Matryona's Home," the short story which Solzhenitsyn would publish after One Day. Through the device of letters back and forth between Shukhov and his wife, the reader learns about the deleterious effect of the Stalinist system on kolkhozes, or collective farms. Plots are divided and subdivided, crops are planted right up to the back of cottages, and men leave to work in other occupations. The hopelessness which pervades the camp, Solzhenitsyn demonstrates, is characteristic not only of this prison but of all of Soviet society.

In Shukhov's discussion with his wife of the men who leave the kolkhoz to become carpet painters, one sees a rudimentary moral code held by the peasant. Unlike Alyosha, Shukhov is not comforted by organized religion. Nonetheless, he clings to certain notions of right and wrong imbedded within him, despite the forces in the camp and in society which push him to abandon them. Shukhov knows that to be a carpet painter "a man needed to be free and easy with people, to be brash, to know how to grease a palm or two. And although Shukhov had trodden the earth for forty years, though he'd lost half his teeth and his head was growing bald, he'd never either given or taken a bribe, nor had he learned to do so in camp." In a sense, the deprivations of camp have clarified this moral code within Shukhov; he can be certain that an action that he would stoop to in the extreme situation of camp life is something he would not do back in the world.

Though at times Shukhov's code seems somewhat arbitrary, it is important to note that his adherence to certain principles - such as taking his hat off at the table - allow him to maintain human dignity in the face of the spirit-destroying atmosphere of the camp. Those small actions which he is able to choose to do become magnified and endowed with far greater significance than they would in the outside world. Thus, it is extremely important to Shukhov that he not "lower himself like Fetiukov, he would never look at a man's mouth." To do so would be to do the same as licking another man's leftover bowl, and would set a man down the path Kuziomin described, that leads to inhumanity and death.

Fetiukov and Kuziomin are polar opposites, foils for each other in Shukhov's camp world of extremes. Fetiukov is a man who has been reduced to his most base desires. He is not above staring at a man's mouth and even demanding a puff, nor does he head the warnings of Buinovsky when he collects used cigarette butts to filter together the tobacco. Fetiukov is not only without human dignity, he lacks an appreciation for dignity, when he tells Buinovsky, "When you've been in for eight years you'll be picking them up yourself. We've seen bigger men than you in campŠ" Kuziomin - and most like Buinovsky as well - in contrast, is a true "big man." Unlike Fetiukov, whom Solzhenitsyn consistently describes as "low," Kuziomin is a prophet-like authority figure, a father-figure who provides a model for the "young men" to follow and survive. He is a man who, when Shukhov met him, had already survived twelve years as a prisoner, and his knowledge that men must live by "the law of the taiga" is based upon experience and steadfast adherence to his principals.

Nikita Khrushchev gave his permission for the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich because he anticipated it strengthening his political agenda of destalinization. As later Soviet critics made clear, though, there is little in the way of explicit political rhetoric in the book. One notable exception is in Buinovsky's confrontation with the guards. A recent prisoner, he cites the Criminal Code's regulations on illegal searches and when ignored, tells the guards they are not true Communists. What Buinovsky has yet to learn - and what the beaten-down Senka tries to tell him - is that there is no place for political ideals or rhetoric in the camp. The guards have the power to search prisoners; to argue is only to court danger. The camp system of punishment, therefore, appears even more arbitrary and unfair because of its disconnect from the political ideals of the Soviet Union. Though these men are all political prisoners, politics rarely surfaces as a meaningful issue in their lives. The camps have reduced them to a single concern - survival - for which they can only find strength within themselves, not within an abstract political ideal.

Again, Solzhenitsyn returns to his theme of freedom within confinement. During the minutes that Shukhov and his squad wait for Tiurin to return with the day's work assignment, the men are physically restricted but mentally free. "So that moment still belonged to the prisoners," he writes. It is interesting that in this Communist society, the nature of the camp system turns time into a possession, to be hoarded and counted, as Shukhov does with the minutes of "freedom" at mealtimes. Shukhov, who had at the beginning of his sentence counted the number of days served and number of days left, has long since ceased that task. Future time means little, for as Shukhov admits to himself, even when he is finished with his sentence, the government could very well exile him or not allow him to return home. For that reason, the concern with time is limited to the present moment, time which the prisoner can be sure he possesses.

These momentary freedoms are all the more poignant because of the near completeness with which the authorities control the prisoners. "The thoughts of the prisoner‹they're not free either," Solzhenitsyn writes as Shukhov marches across the cold steppe to the building site. Nonetheless, Shukhov and his fellow prisoners manage some manner of resistance, using whatever tools are at their disposal. One such tool is language. Though the guards insist in the "morning prayer" that there is to be "no talking" during the march, Shukhov knows that in warmer weather everyone talks. Even in the forms of address used between prisoners, language functions as a resistance to the subhuman stature the prison camp relegates them. Ivan Denisovich, a peasant, is referred to by the author and by his fellow prisoners by his first name and patronymic, a respectful form of address usually reserved for the upper members of society. Shukhov and his fellow prisoner's practice of addressing each other with this form of respect, therefore, is one example of their insistence of reminding themselves and each other of their value and worth as dignified human beings.

Work Assignments to Dinner pages 59-80:

The squad will be working that day on the power station, which has stood unfinished for two months. Tiurin sends different groups to get a box for mixing mortar, cements, and tools, and others to shovel snow and light the stove at the power station. Only Shukhov and Kilgas are left, and Tiurin sends them to find something to cover the three big windows in the machine room with. They'll use that room for mixing mortar and warming themselves. Kilgas, a Lett who speaks fluent Russian and is able to retain his sense of humor because of the two food packages he receives each month, tells Shukhov he knows where they can find some roofing felt. First, Shukhov runs off to retrieve a good, light-weight trowel he has swiped from the tool store and hides in a different place every night. Then, he and Kilgas go to get the felt, passing the 82nd, who are forced to chop holes in the frozen earth with pickaxes, without the aid of a fire. They carry the roll of felt on end between them, so that the superintendent or trusties don't see them taking it.

Back at the power station, the mechanical lift is broken and everything has to be carried by hand to the second story. Now, this unfinished building is filled with life by the 104th. Tiurin puts Shukhov to work fixing the stovepipe, Kilgas fixing the mixing trough, and Senka chopping laths from the railing along the ramp to the second story for tacking the felt for the windows to. The narrator explains the reason the men work so hard is because when one man slacks, the entire squad is penalized by having some rations taken away. Shukhov's every thought is consumed by the task of fixing the stove. He hears Tiurin leave to turn in the work report, and knows that a clever squad leader, who proves that work which hadn't been done is done, rates low jobs as high ones, and greases the palms of the inspectors, keeps his men alive. The camp benefits the most from these work reports because they get thousands of extra rubles which they use to give bonuses to guard-lieutenants like Volkovoi. The prisoners only get six extra ounces of bread for supper, but "a couple of ounces ruled your life."

As Shukhov fixes the stovepipe, Pavlo has the men melt snow in buckets on the stove rather than carry in water. Gopchik, a Ukrainian boy serving a man's sentence, of whom Shukhov thinks fondly because his own son died young, climbs onto the rafters, stringing wire to hold the stovepipe up. He asks Shukhov to teach him how to cast a spoon using the wire. Gopchik goes on to nail up the laths, and Shukhov shows the men how to cut the roofing felt. Even two thicknesses give little protection from the cold, and the men board up the upper half of the door to keep even more cold air from getting in. Now that they've taken the rails off the ramp to use as laths, it's very dangerous and icy. They decide to haul the blocks up by passing them from man to man, from the ground to a platform to the second story.

Shukhov suddenly notices the sun has already climbed to the middle of the sky. The men think that means it's noon, but Buinovsky informs them that Soviet power has passed a decree that it is one o'clock when the sun stands highest in the sky. Knowing that if they carry up the mortar before dinner, it will freeze, Senka allows the men to warm themselves by the fire. They warm only their hands because leather boots held near the fire will crack and valenki will steam, melt, and even burn. As Shukhov takes off his valenki and warms his foot rags, Kilgas jokes that Shukhov has one foot almost home. Like other most other men sentenced before '49, Shukhov was lucky to receive ten years. Since then, the standard sentence meted out to men including Kilgas is twenty-five years. Shukhov is not so optimistic. Many prisoners whose sentences ended during the war were kept for another five years. After serving his ten years, Shukhov knows he could be given another ten or exiled, but sometimes the excitement of his possible release excites him. Nonetheless, he tells Kilgas it's not a fact he'll serve twenty-five years, but it is a fact that he himself has served eight so far.

Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason after confessing to surrendering to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and returning from captivity to carry out a mission for the Germans. In reality, in 1942, when the entire army was surrounded on the Western front, Shukhov was part of a group rounded up in the forest by the Germans. After a day or two in captivity, he and four other men escaped and made their way through the forest back to their own army. Two were shot on the spot by a machine gunner and a third died from his wounds. Though Shukhov and the other surviving escapee told the truth, that they were escaped POWs, they were accused of concocting a cover story. Senka chimes in that he escaped and was captured by the Germans three times. Though the men know little of him, they know that he was in Buchenwald, where he worked for the resistance and was beaten by the Germans.

Kilgas argues that though Shukhov has been in camps for eight years, they weren't "special" camps, out of which no one's ever come out alive. Shukhov remembers his seven years in the North, where any squad that failed to fill its timber-cutting quota was forced to stay in the forest after dark. Shukhov says that they have a quieter life in this "special" camp, where they go back to camp when their work shift is done and where they get three ounces more of bread than in the North. The numbers they're forced to wear don't weigh anything. Fetiukov complains that here, men have their throats cut, but Pavlo corrects, saying that squealers do. Indeed, two squealers and one man mistaken for a squealer have had their throats cut at night in their bunks. Just then, the midday whistle blows. Pavlo takes Shukhov and Gopchik to save the squad's place at the canteen. It's just a board shanty that fits only two squads at a time that is run by a cook and a sanitation worker. The cook has a helper who carries the grits from camp, zeks who carry water and firewood, one man to make sure no prisoners swipe bowls from the canteen, and another man to collect bowls that are swiped. All of these men and the sanitation worker are paid in extra helpings of grits, which come out of the prisoners' rations.

Pavlo, Shukhov, and Gopchik enter the crowded canteen, where the 82nd, who've been digging on the cold steppe, still huddle after finishing eating to keep warm. Pavlo sends Gopchik back to get the squad, and he and Shukhov collect the bowls - real oatmeal, for which Shukhov is grateful, even though he used to feed oats to his horses - from the cook. The cook, then Pavlo, who passes them to Shukhov, then Shukhov, who sets the bowls on the table, must repeat the number of bowls given out. But the cook is momentarily distracted by the return of many empty bowls, and Shukhov is able to swipe two extra bowls, which he passes to the two Estonians. Therefore, when the cook looks at the table, Shukhov is able to show him the twelve bowls they're should have been given so far. Just then, the squad arrrives, and Shukhov collects the last eleven of twenty-three bowls from the cook.

The squad crowds around the tables, and Pavlo hadns out bowls. Having swiped two bowls, Shukhov claims one extra bowl for himself. He retrieves his spoon, removes his hat, and begins to eat. It's a moment that demands complete concentration, but he must eat fast, in order to get the second bowl from Pavlo. Pavlo, as the squad leader's deputy, already gets a double helping from the cook and doesn't seem to notice. Shukhov uses the bread crust he saved to wipe the remnants of the oatmeal from his first bowl, but he doesn't feel full, having expected two bowls. He returns his first bowl and waits with his hat off. Finally, Pavlo finishes his bowl and gives one extra bowl to Shukhov and tells him to give another of the four extra bowls to Tsezar. One bowl always goes back to Tsezar in the office, so as he eats his second helping, Shukhov worries if Fetiukov will perhaps also get a second bowl.

Analysis

Earlier in the novel, Shukhov referred to work as a stick with two ends. In this section, as the prisoners go about their work assignments, we begin to see Shukhov's ambivalent attitude towards work in the camp. On one hand, this work is forced upon him by the camp authorities. If he and the members of his squad do not work their hardest, they will be deprived of their food. Thus, work is necessary to Shukhov's survival. On the other hand, Shukhov takes pride in his work. When fixing the stovepipe, he becomes completely absorbed in his work and loses all sense of time. In that sense, work is also an escape for Shukhov - an escape from thinking and worrying about his lengthy prison sentence. Because he is able to take pride in his work, Shukhov in effect subverts the intent of the camp authorities, who use work as a punishment. From his thoughts about the prospect of working as a carpet painter, it is clear that Shukhov does not shy away from hard work. His punishment is the time he is kept away from his family and freedom, not the work imposed upon him during that time. Therefore, while work is a necessity for Shukhov, it also provides him with a means of mental escape from camp life.

The trowel that Shukhov has swiped is an object that symbolizes the pride and ownership that Shukhov takes in his work. Throughout the book, we have seen the anguish that the collective ownership of all possessions - boots, clothing, tools - takes on Shukhov. Shukhov has so little to call his own that the few objects he does own, including the spoon and the trowel, are endowed with special significance. While the authorities inflict work upon him as a punishment, Shukhov is a craftsmen who wants to take pride in his work. The system of collective ownership of tools - in effect, a microcosm of the communist system - prevents him from doing that. In swiping and secreting the good, light-weight trowel, with which he can do excellent mason work, Shukhov reclaims his work as his own. Because the trowel allows him to good work, it also instills him with a sense of pride and self-worth that the prison system otherwise seeks to destroy. Though this communist system seeks to destroy all private ownership, human nature, as demonstrated through men like Shukhov, find a way to call possessions and work their own even under the harshest conditions.

From the character of Gopchik, we see that this desire for ownership is not limited to Shukhov. Gopchik, a boy serving time in a prison camp with adult men, becomes a surrogate son figure to Shukhov, whose own son is dead. Gopchik sees to emulate Shukhov, asking him to teach him to cast a spoon out of wire, just as he learned to cast his own spoon at the Ust-Izhma camp. Shukhov's role as mentor and role model to Gopchik parallels his own relationship with Kuziomin. In these men, Solzhenitsyn depicts three generations crushed by the Soviet prison camp system. Though Gopchik is optimistic, energetic, and hard-working, Shukhov's other reflections on the prison camp system offer little hope for him. If like Kilgas, Gopchik is serving a sentence of twenty-five years, there is little hope that he can endure until his release. Even if he does, he will have little memory of society beyond the prison camp. Gopchik's plight parallels that of an entire generation of Soviet children growing up when Solzhenitsyn published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - a generation who, unlike him and his protagonist, have never experienced freedom and no nothing of life outside the controlling communist system.

Hopelessness is a recurring theme in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Inwardly, Shukhov cannot imagine how a man, like Kilgas, could possibly survive a twenty-five year sentence, although outwardly he offers his friend encouragement. Though Kilgas and the other men joke about the short amount of time left in Shukhov's sentence, he knows better than to hope for it to end. From the experiences of many other men before him, he realizes that release into society and return to his family is far from definite. The Soviet powers may arbitrarily extend his prison sentence or may exile him. Nonetheless, Shukhov cannot always escape the feelings of happiness and excitement that thoughts of the end of his sentence brings. For the most part, these feelings are dangerous to Shukhov and he tries to ignore them, for to expect and envision his release is to court disappointment.

The primary reason for this hopelessness endured by the prisoners is the corruption of the system. Shukhov is not serving a sentence for a crime he committed. In reality, he is a prisoner of war who should have been regarded as a war hero upon his return. But the extreme suspicion and corruption of the Soviet system under Stalin punishes rather than rewards anyone who might possibly be a threat. Thus, some of the other escaped prisoners of war who returned with Shukhov were shot on sight. Others who escaped form the Germans and survived, like Shukhov and like Senka, who worked for the resistance at Buchenwald, were forced to confess on pain of death and punished for their suffering and bravery in the hands of the enemy. In controlling the very words of the prisoners through these forced confessions, the Soviet powers destroy any conception of truth. The lies and bribes which result within the camps - as with work reports, for example - are the result of a corrupt system.

Even on a more mundane level, the Soviet prison system is corrupt. A system of bribes infiltrates every degree of prison life, from the distribution of oatmeal at mealtimes to the receipt of packages to the transmission of work reports and assignments. Far from creating a system of complete equality under the communist government, this system engenders a complex hierarchy within all levels of the camp. The camp is the lowest rung of Soviet society, and the lowest rung of the camp is corrupt. Through this microcosm of the Soviet system that the camp provides, Solzhenitsyn thus condemns the entire Soviet system, from bottom to top, as corrupt.

Within the camp, ownership does not extend simply to possessions but to time as well. As we have seen from Shukhov's complete concentration over his meals - here, his attempts to concentrate and enjoy his bowl of oatmeal at dinner time - and from the prisoners' enjoyment of the minutes before roll call or work assignments, time is a possession to be hoarded. Time, whether ten years or twenty-five, is what the Soviet government has stolen from these prisoners, and therefore, they seek, through a multitude of small acts, to steal back time for themselves. One way is by claiming, through concentration and pride, their work as their own. Because he prizes time so highly, Shukhov is certain that life in this "special" camp is better than in regular camps. Here, the prisoners are assured that they will only be forced to work for a certain number of hours during the day and that the night will be their own. Nonetheless, despite all this resistance, the all-controlling hand of the Soviet government is felt, when Buinovsky announces the recent decree that the sun now stands the highest at one o'clock. Shukhov's disbelief that the government now seeks to control even the sun demonstrates just how much the government has stolen from the prisoners - time, possessions, even a true understanding of the natural world.

Dinner to the Signal to End Work pages 81-102:

Captain Buinovsky sits near Shukhov in the canteen, finished with his bowl but without the energy to get up, even though he has just yelled at other men for hogging the space when they've finished eating. Buinovsky must learn to be "an inert, though wary, zek" if he is to survive his twenty-five year sentence. Pavlo gives Buinovsky the extra bowl of oatmeal, which angers Fetiukov. Shukhov finishes his own second bowl, scraping it with his crust of bread, before leaving to take Tsezar his bowl.

The office, where Tsezar works, is a warm, stove-heated building near the sentry house. In one room, the superintendent is in a conference, yelling about prisoners chopping up lumber and prefabricated panels for firewood. Shukhov looks at Shkuropatenko, an orderly, and is glad he did not catch him and Kilgas taking the roofing felt. At his desk, Tsezar is arguing with prisoner X 123, an old man, about the filmmaker Eisenstein. Tsezar thinks that Eisenstein is a genius, that true "art isn't a matter of what but how," but X 123 thinks that Eisenstein is an "ass kisser" for justifying personal tyranny and mocking three generations of Russian intelligentsia in his films. Shukhov gives Tsezar his bowl and leaves. On his way back to the power station, he finds a bit of a steel hacksaw blade, which he pockets, hoping to find a future use for it. Back at the power station, the men are crowded around the stoves. Shukhov learns that Tiurin was successful in fixing the work report. With a good work report they will get five - though really four, because one day the entire camp will be on minimum rations - days of good rations.

Tiurin is telling a story about how he was brought before a battalion commander and regimental commander when he was twenty-two. They found out his father was a kulak and discharged him from the army, sending him home dressed in a summer uniform with no train pass. In '38, Tiurin met his former squadron commander at a deportation point and learned both of the men had been shot in '37, which made him believe there was a God. Shukhov is dying to smoke and reckoning he can get tobacco from the Lett, tells the Estonians he'll pay them back if they give him just enough tobacco for one cigarette. As he's enjoying his cigarette, Shukhov sees Fetiukov looking at him but decides to share it with Senka.

Tiurin continues, telling how he hopped a wall into the train station and was helping a girl fill up her kettle when the train left. They both hopped on the moving train together, and he found himself in a coach with six girls, Leningrad students. They hid him on the top berth when he explained his situation, and in '35 helped one of them in the camps by getting her a job in a tailoring shop when she'd been working on a hard labor team. He went home and left with his younger brother that same night. They went to Frunze, where he got a group of road workers to promise to teach his brother - who he hasn't seen since - how to live. Though the whistle hasn't blown yet, Tiurin tells the men to get to work, mixing mortar. Shukhov goes to chip the ice off the existing wall, and Kilgas, who doesn't depend so much on rations because of the food packages he receives, is slower to go. Shukhov tells Pavlo he'll be the fourth man for block laying, and Pavlo says in that case he will make the mortar himself. He and Kilgas go up to the second story and Senka follows them there.

There are already three rows built, and the next rows, from knee to chest will be the easiest to build. Shukhov begins cracking the ice on the top of the wall with his axe. Tiurin announces that they'll work in pairs - Shukhov and Senka, he and Kilgas - rather than alone so that the mortar doesn't freeze. As Shukhov shows Senka where to chop the ice, he is already envisioning how many rows it will take and where he needs to put the blocks to even up the incompetently laid wall. He brushes off the ice with a wire brush and stretches a string at the height of three blocks, then begins to lay the blocks using mortar brought up in barrows from below. He has to be careful to slap on just enough mortar and to lay the blocks exactly right because the mortar freezes quickly. There is a rhythm to the work, and Shukhov continues as new barrows of mortar are brought up. The work warms them up, in a first wave and then again after an hour in a second wave. Even the cold wind doesn't distract them.

Buinovsky and Fetiukov carry the mortar up at first. Buinovsky gets faster and faster, but Fetiukov gets lazier, even sloppy mortar out of his barrow so that it will be lighter to push, until finally Buinovsky demands Tiurin give him someone else to work with. Tiurin gives him Alyosha, who is quiet and follows orders well, and makes Fetiukov carry up blocks. Downstairs, a mechanic and a civilian superintendent arrive to look at the broken lift. Shukhov is on his third row when Der, a building-foreman, followed by Pavlo, arrives to watch them work. There were no brick, only wood, buildings in Shukhov's town, but he learned to be a mason in the camps. Der tells Tiurin he'll get a third term for stealing the roofing felt, but Tiurin throws down his trowel and takes a menacing step towards Der. Senka also approaches and Pavlo lifts his spade. Tiurin tells Der if he says anything it will be his last day on earth. Der backs down, taking shelter behind Kilgas.

Tiurin tells Der to tell the superintendent that the roofing felt was already on the windows. Angry, Der lashes out at Shukhov, saying he's using too much mortar, but Shukhov explains that if he uses more in this weather, it will be like a sieve in the spring. As Der goes down the ramp, Tiurin demands he get the lift repaired but Der can only say the men will be paid for carrying the blocks. Der goes back to the office, and the men from downstairs say that the mechanic and superintendent say the motor in the lift is past repair. Shukhov has seen lots of machinery broken down or smashed by zeks, like a log conveyer that broke because some men shoved a log under the chain to give themselves a moment's rest. Tiurin demands more mortar from downstairs, and the masons begin a fifth row of blocks. Gopchik reports that the 82nd have gone to hand in their tools, and the sun is about to set, but Tiurin tells them to continue. Shukhov is getting cold now and his back hurts when he bends for the mortar, but he wants to finish the fifth row before they leave for the day. Alyosha helps by lifting up the blocks, and just then the rail clangs, signaling the end of the work day.

Analysis

In this section of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, we see the value placed upon and struggle over work. For the camp officials and Soviet government, work is a commodity. Its value is something to be haggled over by squad leaders and bookkeepers. In many ways, this understanding of work as a measurable commodity is used as a means of oppression against the prisoners. Work is measured and distributed, as are necessities like food and rest time. But because of this, prisoners, such as squad leader Tiurin, use this commodication of work for their own benefits - using other commodities like food and tobacco to bribe officials and have the value placed on a certain task changed or increased. By accepting and trading upon the official understanding of work, the prisoners can find a means of a degree of resistance.

For Shukhov, however, work's primary value is as an act. Work and the practice of the trade provides Shukhov with a means of self-respect. The task to which one is assigned in the camp not only defines one's place in the hierarchy - as with office workers and cooks, who are in positions to be bribed by lower ranking prisoners - but the possibility of survival. One example of this is the woman whom Tiurin helped be transferred from a hard labor squad to a tailoring shop, trading upon the commodification of work and in doing so saving the woman's life. Shukhov, likewise, has found a trade needed in the prison camps which he can perform successfully. His mental exertions in planning and laying the blocks in the wall demonstrate his skill at masonry and the pride he takes in the task. Unlike the previous layer of the wall, who did a poor job, Shukhov has ironically found a new trade and a new source of pride in the prison camps in learning and excelling at masonry. In an environment in which he has no possessions of his own, a brick wall is a physical object he can look at with pride and in which he can see his self-worth reflected.

The metaphor of squad as family is made explicit here, when Shukhov returns from giving Tsezar his bowl in the office to see the squad gathered around the stoves. Tiurin is a father figure, respected by the men whom he calls "boys." The white hairs Shukhov notices in the light of the fire and the story he tells to offer the example of mutual help between prisoners support this image of Tiurin as father figure. This principle of mutual support, however, is contrasted with Der's confrontation of Tiurin and his threat to turn him in for the criminal act of covering the windows of roofing felt. That one prisoner would purposely seek the sentence of an additional prison term for another prisoner demonstrates the demoralizing and destructive effect the prison camp system has upon the human spirit. In this instance, in which Tiurin's men stand with him against Der, the principle of mutual support among prisoners prevails over Der's self-interest.

The discussion of the filmmaker Eisenstein provides an interesting commentary on the circumstances surrounding Solzhenitsyn's publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Prisoner X 123 provides a mouthpiece for Solzhenitsyn to condemn purely propagandistic art and the denounce those artists who silenced their own political views to promote a repulsive dominant ideology simply for the sake of publication. Tsezar, on the other hand, takes a more pragmatic view, saying that art is in the how rather than the what and that Eisenstein chose the only subject matter available to him. In neither case, interestingly enough, does either man suggest that it is possible to truly embrace and promote the government's agenda through art. It is assumed that the artist's true ideology differs from the one he is allowed to express.

Solzhenitsyn, however, was only able to publish his novel because of the changing political climate in the Soviet Union in the early '60s and Premier Khrushchev's desire to find art that promoted his own political agenda of denouncing Stalin. On the surface, then, it seems that Solzhenitsyn is eerily similar to Eisenstein, a man his own character condemns, in that he publishes his art only because it accords with government sentiments. As Solzhenitsyn's later books and the official Soviet reaction to them would show, however, is that Solzhenitsyn simply used the coincidence of his opinion about the Soviet prison camps with Khrushchev's destalinization policy to create for himself a public mouthpiece through which he could continue to express his true opinion even when that opinion, in cases other than the publication of One Day, would go on to differ from that of the government.

In this section of the novel, we see stirrings of subjects that would later be more fully expressed in Solzhenitsyn's works. Tiurin's story, about his discharge from the army and attempts at eluding capture, is one of many individual narrative Solzhenitsyn subsumes in what is ostensibly the story of just one man. In the course of the novel, he provides a brief history of a cross section of men in Shukhov's squad - Tiurin, Gopchik, Senka, the Estonians, Fetiukov, Buinovsky, etc. These personal narratives, most likely based upon the real life stories of the men Solzhenitsyn knew in prison camp, remind the reader of the breadth of the prison camp system. Indeed, nearly every Russian had a family member who was sent to the camps during Stalin's regime. In his later multi-volume work The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn would seek to represent and record the abuses of the prison camp system in more detail. In this book, he begins the process of giving voice to the real men who were silenced through their imprisonment under Stalin.

Signal to End Work to Evening Recount pages 103-124:

The rail has just clanged, signaling the end of work, but the squad still has an entire box of mortar remaining that will freeze and be useless if left overnight. The men throw themselves into their work on the wall, with Shukhov rushing to and fro helping out. When they notice that the other squads are beginning to head to the gates, Tiurin orders them to throw the mortar into a hole and cover it with snow to hide it. Pavlo goes to collect and hand in tools, and Shukhov, Kilgas, and Senka stay to use up the other two loads of mortar. Worried that Tiurin will be reprimanded for the trowels being handed in late, Shukhov suggests that Kilgas and Senka give theirs to Gopchik to hand in, since his isn't on the list. Kilgas runs off with the tools after Gopchik, and it appears the men are beginning to be counted at the gates. Tiurin urges him to sling the rest of the mortar over the wall, but Shukhov tells him to leave but insists on finishing.

Shukhov and Senka, now the only two left, hurry and finally use up the rest of the mortar on the wall. Shukhov takes the time to appreciate how straight and even it is. Senka is already running down the ramp but Shukhov tells him to run ahead. He hides his trowel under a stone in the machine shop then catches up with Senka. They run through a crowd of angry, booing men to reach their squad., which is just forming fives to be counted. Shukhov looks up and sees the moon, and asks Buinovsky where the old moon goes. Shukhov learned in his village that God crumbles up the old moon every month to make new stars to replace those that have fallen. Buinovsky thinks he's an idiot. The two of them are at the back of the ranks as the guards count again. Someone is missing.

The prisoners are angry because the recounts waste time in the evening that belongs to them. The head guard asks Tiurin if anyone in his squad is missing, and he says no. The ranks of five had formed as the men happened to be standing. Now, the guards make them form squads. The 104th has not brought any firewood, which the men sneak through every night in the hopes that the guards will not make them drop all of it, to supplement the coal dust they are given for their barracks stoves. No one is missing in the 104th, but someone - a little Moldavian, who was a real Rumanian spy, not a prison-made "spy" like Shukhov and many others - in the 32nd is missing. Everyone, including Shukhov, becomes angry at the Moldavian for not finishing work when he was supposed to, even though an hour earlier Shukhov himself was not ready to stop. It's getting very cold, and the men begin to discuss whether the Moldavian could have escaped. Tiurin and Buinovsky share a cigarette and talk about film and about a depiction of oversize maggots in meat that now the prisoners would only be too happy to eat.

The Moldavian is brought back from the repair shop, where he'd crawled up to do some plastering and fallen asleep. His deputy squad leader punches him in the face and a Hungarian from his own squad kicks him from behind. The head of the escort orders the men to back up from the gates and form fives for yet another recount. The men start booing him now and he threatens to make them lie down in the snow till dawn. The zeks draw back from the gates and nervously look toward the back of the crowd to see if there are now three men in the last row. Shukhov is worried that there will be four, an extra man, but it turns out it is only Fetiukov who had wandered out of line for a smoke. The guard hits him but counts three, and the gates finally open.

Only when the last prisoner is off the site and the numbers are confirmed are the sentries allowed to leave their towers. Some guards will allow the prisoners to start walking, assuming the sentries will catch up, but tonight, an idiot guard makes them wait in the cold. Now, their evening and the possibility of doing anything of their own in the camp is lost. Shukhov hears Buinovsky and another man talking. Buinovsky spent a month on board a British cruiser as a liaison office, and after the war, a British admiral sent him a gift as a token of gratitude, which made the Soviet government suspicious. The escort finally lets them go, but they know they're the last column and despite his demands they hurry up, they walk with measured tread. Shukhov considers going to dispensary again but realizes his back no longer hurts and his fever won't be high enough. He hopes instead for the opportunity to supplement his dinner if Tsezar gets another package.

Suddenly, the column starts running. They have spotted the column from the machine works and now there is the possibility of not being the last ones back. Now the escort seems like their friend and the other column the enemy. Since prisoners throats have begun getting cut in their sleep, the guards have taken extra time searching the column from the machine works, in case they are bringing back knives. Shukhov's column doesn't want to wait while the guards search them. Shukhov heard that the men from the machine works brought back twenty knives inside poles for a volleyball net back in the summer. Shukhov's column has taken the lead as they round a corner and are certain they'll get back first. The camp is flooded with light to aid in the searching of the prisoners. As they approach, a guard demands they drop their firewood and some zeks yell at other zeks inside the column who attempt to conceal it. The zek's main enemy is another zek. The guards make them unbutton their coats but the prisoners don't mind so much now because they're going "home." They never have time to think of another home.

Shukhov offers to run to the parcels office and keep a place in line for Tsezar in case he gets a parcel. The guards are about to frisk him when Shukhov realizes he still has the bit of hacksaw blade, for which he intended to find a use on the work site, in his pants pocket. He could drop it in the snow but he knows he could make little knife out of it to do cobbler work and make money for food. He hides it in one of his mittens, which he holds together behind his other mitten in one hand, and opens his coat, approaching an older, more fed up guard very subserviently to be frisked. The guard crushes the first mitten in his hand and Shukhov offers up a little prayer to God, for he knows the punishment for being found with an object classified as a knife is ten days in the guardhouse, which could leave a man so weak he might not recover. The escort chief calls for the guards to begin searching the machine works column, and the guard lets Shukhov pass.

The head guard speaks to Priakhov, Volkovoi's deputy, and calls the Moldavian out of the column. They are going to charge him with attempting to escape and put him in the cells. The guards open another set of gates and make the prisoners form fives again. Evening recount, when they are famished and freezing, is hardest for the prisoners, who look forward to their bowls of thin, burned cabbage soup. After recount, the prisoners become free men again. After passing through four sets of gates, they can go where the like. The squad leaders must remain and go to the planning office for the officer who assigns work. As soon as he gets through the gates, Shukhov runs toward the parcels office, while Tsezar goes to check the list of prisoners who have received parcels that day.

Analysis

Solzhenitsyn continues the theme of finding freedom through the act of working in this part of his novel. The prisoners are angry that they are forced to wait and return to camp so late in the evening not only because they have lost their only free time during the day but, more specifically, because "there'd be no time now to do anything of their own in camp." Shukhov is eager to return to do whatever work he can - on this night, to pick up Tsezar's package, in hopes of gaining a share of his food, and in the future, perhaps to use the hacksaw blade to earn something by fixing shoes - not to rest or go to the dispensary. Though this is a forced labor camp, work itself is not the punishment. Rather, this labor is punishment because the individual has no choice in what he does. Solzhenitsyn and his protagonist find merit in the act of work, though they condemn the imposition of work through force.

Even in his work assignment, however, Shukhov finds a degree of freedom in his work. Because he has become so skilled a mason, able to judge as well with his eye as one might with a straight edge, Shukhov works for his own satisfaction more than he works because he must. That Shukhov refused to waste the mortar and took the time to skillfully complete the wall even when according to prison regulation, he should have ceased work and returned to the gate for the evening count, demonstrates that he has made the work assigned to him his own. In choosing to continue working even when he was supposed to - and when many others did - stop, Shukhov asserts his own will upon the work and demonstrates that he is not completely controlled by the camp authorities.

In the end, for Shukhov, all work is about survival. On one level, he must work as much as possible - in the evening, doing errands for others or perhaps cobbling - to gain enough food and favors to survive. Therefore, work beyond what is required of him by the camp is necessary to ensure his survival. On another level, though, Shukhov must not preserve just his body but also his mind and spirit during his term in the camp. Taking pride in his work, whether as a mason or a cobbler, protects Shukhov's sense of himself and provides him with the dignity necessary to remain human under these inhumane conditions. To lose that second sense of work's importance would reduce Shukhov to the level of Fetiukov, who works only as much as he must and maintains no dignity or self-respect.

In depicting Shukhov and Senka's race to finish the wall after the end of the work day, Solzhenitsyn is not condemning the Communist system, under the ideology of which the worker is paramount. Rather, Solzhenitsyn is criticizing Stalin's implementation of this Soviet ideology, in a way in which work is raised up as more important than the worker. In Senka's work at Shukhov's side and his willingness to wait for Shukhov to run back to the gate together, Solzhenitsyn depicts the worker solidarity that was originally at the heart of the Communist ideology. Senka and Shukhov are idealized views of the Communist worker who tries his hardest for the sake of the work rather than for a reward and whose loyalty to his fellow worker is the source of his power.

Repeatedly, however, Solzhenitsyn criticizes the true relationship between workers in Stalin's prison camps - and implicitly, in Stalin's Soviet Union. "Who's the zek's main enemy?" he asks. "Another zek. If only they weren't at odds with one another‹ah, what a difference that'd make!" The authorities which govern this system depend on the prisoner-workers to be at odds with one another as a means of controlling them. In effect, they are subverting the very foundation upon which the Communist ideology is built. The Marxist concept of Revolution is based upon the strength of united workers. The "difference that'd make" if the zeks banded together and worked toward a common purpose is in fact Revolution. Solzhenitsyn depicts a Communist society, in the form of the Stalinist prison camp system, already in need of another Revolution to free its workers from oppression.

The theme of zek against zek is one Solzhenitsyn repeats throughout the novel, from his depiction of squealers whose throats are cut, to the competition for food and cigarettes, to the antagonism between squads and columns. Though individual relationships, such as that between Shukhov and Senka, demonstrate another, more idealized possibility of friendship and solidarity within the camp system, antagonism between prisoners is exceedingly common. In creating an enormous prison camp system where this conflict between individual workers is the status quo, the Soviet authorities have - perhaps deliberately - created a system subverting the ideals of Communism.

The Parcel House to Return to the Barracks pages 125-144:

Shukhov rushes to the parcels office, where a line of fifteen men, holding bags and sacks, has formed along the porch. The guards who open the parcels chop open boxes and pour liquid out of glass containers, and prisoners have to bring bags to carry the contents back in. Prisoners receiving parcels have to give away bits of it to lots of people, including the guard who opens it. Shukhov had received parcels from home while in Ust-Izhma but told his wife not to send him more and take food out of the kids' mouths. Still, whenever anyone in his barracks gets a parcel, he wishes one would come for him. Even so, he doesn't have time to remember his home in Temgenovo that much. While in line, Shukhov hears that there wasn't going to be a Sunday that week. In months with five Sundays, the authorities usually only give them three off from work. And even then, they find tasks - inventories, fixing and cleaning things - for the prisoners to do in camp.

The line moves slowly and trusties keep pushing their way in front. Finally Tsezar arrives when there are ten men ahead of Shukhov. He talks with another Muscovite who has received a recent newspaper before Shukhov interrupts him to say he is going and show him his place in line. Shukhov asks if he can bring Tsezar his dinner from the mess hall, which many prisoners do even though it's forbidden, and as Shukhov had hoped, Tsezar tells him he can eat it himself. Shukhov rushes off toward the mess hall. The camp commandant had issued an order that no individual prisoners were allowed to walk around camp on their own but instead needed to always be in groups of four or five, and at first, the guards had enforced it, but it gradually became impractical and ceased to be enforced. Shukhov stops at the barracks on his way and checks to see that no one has stolen his bread from his mattress and runs to the mess hall, where by another order of the commandant, prisoners are required to enter by twos.

The mess orderly is an enormous, lame man called "the Limper" who stands on the porch of the mess hall and hits men who try to sneak in at the wrong time with a big birch club. The mess chief, a fat man with a big head and broad shoulders, is also on the porch as Shukhov arrives looking for his squad. The Limper pushes a whole row of men back and onto the ground as they try to get on the porch. Shukhov spots Pavlo, leading the squad and must push through the angry crowd, swinging up on the porch and getting kicked and hit in the process in order to enter the mess hall with his squad.

Inside, Shukhov sets off without being asked to look for a tray. He spots S 208 carrying his last tray-load and asks for his tray when he's done, taking in and pushing away the man S 208 had promised it to at the counter. When Shukhov gets to Pavlo with the tray, young Gopchik, who will do all right for himself in a couple years, has taken a tray from two men who were arguing. At the counter, the cook ladles soup into ten bowls for Shukhov's tray, and Shukhov notes which bowls are just water and which are thicker. He brings them back to the table, angling the tray so the thicker stew is nearest his seat, and Kilgas arrives with the bread tray. The bread will be rationed according to the amount of work done that day and Shukhov gets 12 ounces in addition to Tsezar's six.

Shukhov claims one of the thick bowls by putting his spoon in it and helps Pavlo count and hand out the stew to the squad. Pavlo sits with his double helping and Shukhov with his two bowls, and they say nothing‹"the sacred moments had come." Shukhov first drinks the broth out of both bowls, filling himself with the warmth, and thinks of nothing, except that they will survive, they'll stick it out till it's over. Next, he tips the contents of his second bowl into his first and eats that - cabbage, broth, fish, a bit of potato - slowly. Today is a "red letter day" with two helpings at lunch and supper. He doesn't notice much as he eats except for an old man, U 81, from another squad who sits down across from him. Unlike most prisoners, this man doesn't slouch bit sits straight and doesn't bend towards his soup but brings the spoon up to his mouth. His skin is like carved stone and his hands are cracked and black from hard work, but he wraps his bread in a rag rather than placing it on the table and won't give in.

Shukhov finishes his supper and taking his bread with him for tomorrow, since he won't gain by stuffing himself today, and heads to Barracks 7 to buy tobacco from the Lett. In the past, he has paid one ruble for a glass of tobacco, which is actually less than you would pay on the outside. In Ust Izhma, he was paid at least thirty rubles a month for his work, but here he is not paid at all. If money is sent from home, prisoners can only spend it out of an account at the commissary once a month. Shukhov finds the Lett, lying on a bunk, talking to his neighbor. Shukhov and the Lett make small talk till everyone in the barracks stops paying attention to them.

The Lett lets Shukhov examine the tobacco and then measures some into a glass. Shukhov urges him to stuff it in rather than let it fall loosely, so that he will get enough. Shukhov pulls out two rubles he has sewn inside his coat and buys two glasses full of tobacco, which the Lett pours into Shukhov's pouch. Meanwhile, in the barracks, people argue about whether China's entrance into the Korean War means another World War and about Stalin. At Ust-Izhma, any mention of politics would land a prisoner in the guardhouse, but at this "special" camp, the security boys don't care.

Back in Barracks 9, Shukhov finds Tsezar sitting on his bunk with his new package. As he offers Tsezar his bread from dinner, he glances sideways at the package and sees that Tsezar has received sausage, condensed milk, smoked fish, salt pork, crackers, biscuits, lump sugar, butter, cigarettes, and pipe tobacco. Tsezar tells Shukhov, who knows better than to imply he wants something from the package, to keep the bread. Shukhov decides he is happy enough with the bread - his 12 ounces, Tsezar's 6 ounces, and at least 6 ounces from the morning. He decides to eat six then and still have a day's ration left, leaving the other bread in the mattress. Men who receive packages don't get to keep everything. They give a little to the guard, squad leader, trusty in the parcels office, the fellow at the place where they guard your package after you've gotten it, the bath attendant, the barber, the CED, the doctor if you want to play sick for a couple of days, and the neighbor you share a locker with. Shukhov knows not to expect what doesn't belong to him.

Analysis

Solzhenitsyn makes effective use of understatement in this part of his novel. Rather than choose emotionally overblown language, Solzhenitsyn uses simple, factual statements and in doing so communicates the extreme effects of camp life on Shukhov and other prisoners. Rather than show Shukhov longing to be reunited with his wife and children and reminiscing about his time with them, he chooses the opposite path. Shukhov "had less and less cause to remember Temgenovo and his home there. Life in the camp wore him out from reveille to bedtime, with not a second for idle reflections." Shukhov accepts this fact and does not struggle against it. In that very acceptance, we see the effect the prison camps have had on Shukhov emotionally. They control him and other prisoners not only physically but emotionally, until prisoners cease to hope or imagine returning home.

Shukhov's acceptance of his gradual ceasing to remember home contrasts sharply with the actions he has taken in regard to his family. Even though "his heart ache[s]" for a package, he knows that sending packages to him for ten years of a sentence would be a burden on his wife and children. Even though it is easier to get food outside of the camps, he decides to sacrifice packages in order to ensure that his wife and children have enough food. Shukhov's insistence that he not be a burden on his family is extreme and definite. His refusal to allow his wife to send packages even once a year on Easter demonstrates that he has made this decision as a result of principle as well as practicality. In some ways, it is easier emotionally as well as financially for both him and his family to keep their connections to a minimum. Nonetheless, the aching heart Shukhov feels when he has not received a package is an emotional reaction to the division he has created between himself and a family's love, as represented by the package.

In Shukhov and his fellow prisoners, Solzhenitsyn creates a depiction of humanity in extremis. In their extreme situation, truths, emotions, and meanings become more pronounced. When a few ounces of bread can mean the difference between life and death, the deeper meanings of a person's actions because clearer. Therefore, the moment in which Shukhov eats his soup in the mess hall is not only relaxing but is one of "the sacred moments." At that moment, Shukhov is free to think only of himself and his fulfillment.

Shukhov's realization in the "sacred moment" of eating is profound and moving because of its simplicity. "We'll survive. We'll stick it out, God willing, till it's over." Shukhov does not hope for immediate release or an easy prison term but simply for survival. And yet, that belief that he can and will survive is incredibly important in the context under which Shukhov lives, in which ten days in the guardhouse with poor rations can make a man so sick he will never recover to be released. Survival is all that Shukhov can hope for, but it is exactly what he needs to believe in order to continue to exist in this environment.

Shukhov's survival is not survival at all costs but requires the survival of both body and spirit. In the camp, minor actions take on major significance as prisoners attempt to follow a moral code in an amoral environment and to maintain their human dignity. Shukhov's refusal to even mention the food package - and thus imply he wants something from it - is an example of an action designed to protect dignity. Similarly, prisoner U 81 exemplifies dignity in his behavior. Despite years of suffering and prison sentence upon prison sentence, this old man is dignified in both his actions - sitting straight, bringing his spoon up to his mouth, wrapping his bread in cloth rather than placing it on the table - and his appearance - heavily lined skin, hardened hands. Though his physical appearance - bald and without teeth - tells of the ravages of the prison system, it is clear that his dignity has survived intact. Thus, he is not an object of pity but of awe. He represents humanity's difficult struggle to overcome attempts to destroy it.

The Soviet authorities are again, in this section, represented at thieves of time. When Shukhov finds out that the prisoners will be forced to work on Sunday, he phrases it as an act of theft: "Again there wasn't going to be a Sunday this week; again they were going to steal one of their Sundays." The prisoners value their free time and see this time as something they own because its necessity in the extra work they do - trading, working, bribing - on their own to survive. The authorities are taking from them not only the opportunity to take a nap but the free time which defines them as men and which determines their physical and spiritual survival.

There appears to be a limit to the degree to which the authorities can control the prisoners, however. Unnecessary regulations that conflict with human nature seem to fail to succeed in the long run. For that reason, the guards do not completely - or sometimes at all - enforce regulations such as the carrying of firewood into camp or the requirement that men walk around in groups of four or five that help the prisoners to survive and do nothing to harm the camp. Though it is clear from regulations like these the commandant seeks to "rob them of their last shred of freedom," there seems to be a limit to the control these authorities can have. If we see the camp as a microcosm for the Soviet Union under Stalin and recognize these "flop" regulations have parallels in equally unrealistic and unenforceable laws, Solzhenitsyn's criticism of an entire political system and its flaws becomes much more pointed.

Twice in this part of the book, Solzhenitsyn sets up a contrast between the reader and Shukhov. Shukhov looks first at the old man in the mess hall and then at the stars in the sky over the camp and decides he has no time for reflection. Likewise, he earlier recognizes how little he thinks of his home. The reader differs from Shukhov because in reading the book, he is explicitly finding time for reflection. Part of the tragedy of the camp system on men like Shukhov is that it steals from them the time or energy to reflect upon their own fates. Thus Solzhenitsyn in effect urges the reader to do this act of reflection for them, to see the injustice of their situation, and to act.

Return to the Barracks to Sleep pages 144-160:

Now, Shukhov has to conceal the bit of hacksaw blade. After whetting it down with a pebble in the mornings and evenings for four days, he will have a sharp little knife. Now, he hides it in a partition between the bunks before the captain returns and can see from his bunk below what he's doing. Fetiukov walks in crying, having been beaten up over the bowls, and crawls into his bunk. Shukhov feels sorry for him, knowing he won't see the end of his stretch. The captain returns with a pot of real tea he must have made with a pinch of Tsezar's tea and hot water from the faucet. From below, Tsezar asks to borrow Shukhov's pen-knife, which he made himself and hides inside a partition. Shukhov retrieves it and lends it to him to cut his sausage, knowing that means Tsezar is in his debt again. Shukhov hands over the amount of the tobacco he borrowed to the Estonians who roll it up and begin to smoke. Shukhov can hear Captain Buinovsky and Tsezar sharing food and drinking tea on the bunk below.

"Snubnose," a young guard, enters. He asks Tiurin if his people have signed forms about the extra garments they were wearing, and Tiurin stalls, saying not all his people are educated. He asks specifically about S 311, but Tiurin says he doesn't know all the numbers, in hopes of sparing Buinovsky that night in the cells. When Snubnose mentions Buinovsky by name, however, the captain pipes up. He's being taken to the cells for ten days. The 104th built those cells - cement floor, brick walls, barely any heat, boards to sleep on, nine ounces of bread a day and hot stew only on every third day. After ten days in the cells a man's health is ruined, and he spends the rest of his sentence with TB and in hospitals. After fifteen days in the cells, most men are buried. The captain goes off, without his coat and with a few cigarettes from Tsezar.

Just then, the barracks commander calls everyone out for evening count. Shukhov holds his cigarette in his hand as he goes. He feels bad for Tsezar, who rather than bringing his package straight to storage didn't know better than to gloat. Now the first person back from the count will steal it. Shukhov advises him to claim to be sick, so as to be the last one to leave, and says he will be the first one back. He lights his cigarette and goes outside.

Smoking his cigarette, Shukhov gets into the second line of five. The other prisoners take a long time to come out of the barracks. The prisoners have no watches or clocks, but Shukhov has heard that evening count starts at 9:00 but with a recount or two, it never gets over until 10:00. They are up again at 5:00 the next morning. The men in the back don't get into fives quickly and the barracks commander starts hitting the meek ones. As soon as they're recounted, the men rush from their group of five back inside. Now that there is a drying shed, unlike last year, subsequent recounts take place inside.

Shukhov is one of the first back. He puts his boots on the stove to dry and sits on Tsezar's bunk watching his things. Tsezar comes rushing back and thanks him. Shukhov, with more bread to eat and another cigarette to smoke, feels he has had a good day and prepares to make his bed. He sleeps on the mattress, under a grubby blanket and his coat with his feet in the sleeve of his jacket. Across from him, Alyosha is reading his Bible and suggests Shukhov pray. Shukhov compares prayers to the appeals they hand in to a box outside the staff quarters, which are either ignored or returned rejected. Though Alyosha says faith can move mountains, Shukhov scoffs at him. Alyosha says they should pray only for their daily bread and things of the spirit, and despite his protestations, Shukhov tells him about their priest in Polomnya, who was the richest man in town, paying alimony to three different women and bribing the bishop.

Alyosha tells Shukhov that the Orthodox Church has departed from Scripture. Shukhov says he believes in God but not heaven or hell and that prayer doesn't shorten your stretch. Alyosha says it's wrong to pray for freedom, that in prison you have time to think about your soul. Shukhov doesn't know if he wants freedom now or not, since he knows that men like him are exiled after their stretch and for him, freedom is home. He sees that Alyosha is truly happy but can't understand, even if Jesus wants Alyosha to sit in prison, why he is there - because they weren't ready for the war in forty-one?

Just then, the guards call them down for a second count. Tsezar gives him two biscuits, two lumps of sugar, and a slice of sausage, and he hides the bundle for him under his mattress because it would be harder to take from an upper bunk. Barefoot, Shukhov goes with the others to the opposite side of the barracks, where they're counted one by one as they pass back to their side. Shukhov manages to be eighteenth and rushes back to climb into his bed. He gives Alyosha one of his biscuits for nothing. He eats and enjoys the slice of sausage and leaves the rest for morning.

Shukhov is content because of his many strokes of luck that day. It has been "almost a happy day." He has "three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretchŠ The extra three days were for leap years."

Analysis

Solzhenitsyn derives an incredible amount of emotional power from his use of understatement in this final part of his book. The final passage specifically uses bare facts to communicate Shukhov's near hopeless acceptance of his punishment. The reader is surprised to find that this day, with all its hardships, that s/he has just heard described in detail, has been "almost a happy day." Whereas a lesser writer would have described the worst possible day in the prison camps, Solzhenitsyn's choice of describing a better than average day allows him more emotional weight in convincing the reader just how bad things really were. The occurrences that Shukhov thinks of as strokes of luck - getting an extra bowl of oatmeal, for instance - are small events that are needed to ensure his survival. In simply listing the number of days very much like that day in Shukhov's sentence, the author very simply and very effectively communicates the hopelessness of such a prison sentence.

Solzhenitsyn also effectively uses understatement in describing Shukhov's ambivalent feelings about freedom. Shukhov has long ago ceased counting the number of days left in his sentence; this abandonment of hope is in fact necessary to his survival, for he knows of the possibility of being disappointed by facing exile after his sentence. In only two sentences, Solzhenitsyn communicates the true pain inflicted upon Shukhov by this harsh system: "Freedom meant one thing to him‹home. But they wouldn't let him go home." For all of his thoughts about freedom, in the evening or over meals, Shukhov longs for the one thing the prison has truly deprived him of, his home.

Unlike Alyosha, Shukhov has no system for making sense of his plight. He has done no wrong and thinks of himself and others as simply having been punished for being POWs or because the country wasn't ready for war. His religious background, coming from a town with a corrupt priest, does not provide him consolation the way Alyosha's does. However, neither Shukhov nor the narrator mocks Alyosha but rather recognizes the real consolation and acceptance he finds in the belief that he is in prison because Jesus wants him there. Though Shukhov believes in God and follows a moral code, he has no system that can offer him a reason for his unjust imprisonment. Nonetheless, he does not fail to be a good, generous, even Christian person, as when he gives Alyosha a biscuit expecting nothing in return.

Throughout the book, Shukhov knows better than to hope for too much - whether in envisioning the end of his stretch or asking Tsezar for some of his parcel. Those who seek to enjoy themselves too much - like Tsezar and Buinovsky, hurriedly enjoying the parcel - risk quick disappointment, while those like Shukhov, who wait, are rewarded. However, we must note that Shukhov is rewarded only in proportion to what he hopes for. Knowing better than to hope, he will not be disappointed. Although this is a safe mechanism for coping with prison life, it is also an effect of the prison camp system upon him - destroying his capacity for hope and thoughts of the future.

Especially towards the end of the book, in the original 1963 authorized translation of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn's use of narrative voice blurs the lines between fiction and reality. Though the book is told primarily through Shukhov's point of view, it is not told in the first person. Doing so allows the author to reflect on matters greater than those which concern a peasant like Shukhov. They also allow him to offer glimpses into other characters lives and their destinies. When we hear that clever Gopchik will do fine for himself in a few years when he grows up, even become a bread distributor, or that Fetiukov has the wrong attitude and will not survive his stretch, it is unclear if we are hearing Shukhov's judgments about his fellow prisoners or the observations of another man, Solzhenitsyn, who spent time living in and observing other men in Stalin's camps.

Towards the end of the book, this narrative voice ceases to speak completely in the third person and suddenly, words like "we" and "us" begin to appear. Sometimes, these appear to be Shukhov's thoughts, as when he remembers other prisoners swiping possessions out of lockers at Ust-Izhma, but sometimes, it seems that the pronouns include the narrator himself in the story. This collective recollection does more than remind the reader that Solzhenitsyn, like his protagonist, lived through a camp sentence under Stalin. It also reminds the reader of the enormity of the camp experience, of the sheer number of men and women from practically every Soviet household who experienced the camps like Shukhov did. This reminder to the reader that this is a shared, collective experience is appropriate for a novel that reawakens and speaks out against an ugly period of history that had until that time been silenced. Solzhenitsyn's novel is a Russian novel not only in the styles it follows but in that it seeks to speak for the Russian and other Soviet people, for millions of people who, like Shukhov, were silenced by the camps.

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