One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an extremely stirring book. It contains blunt, factual descriptions of real and difficult things. And that gives it an impact that flowery language would only detract from.

I particularly liked the description of the firewood economy. Every workday, the prisoners gather sticks from outside. They’re not allowed to do this. It’s against the rules to smuggle things in, and the prison is warm enough. (It’s not.) The guards are also cold, but it’s even harder for them to gather firewood from outside than it is for the prisoners.

So the guards let the prisoners gather firewood, and then as they come back in, search them at random and take it. If they were to take all the prisoners’ firewood, then the prisoners would stop gathering it. So they have to leave them some. That way, both sides can make little fires so they don’t die. Or, so they don’t die that week.

The discipline-oriented task of searching the prisoners has metamorphosed. Now it’s an unspoken mutual repudiation of discipline. What once prevented smuggling now functions as an implicit endorsement of it.

It’s an interesting logical curlicue. And by describing the very concrete economy that forms around everybody being cold, Solzhenitsyn doesn’t have to constantly hammer on the fact that Shukhov is cold; all these little fights and economies and habits that form and become part of the culture because of the constant cold never stop reminding us. It’s everywhere. And, like everything that’s so ubiquitous you forget about it, it’s nowhere.

The same with hunger. The same with violence. The same with time.

I love how Shukhov does such a good job building his section of wall. He even risks serious trouble, including death, for the sake of doing a good job. There’s a glimpse there of the man he would have been if the Soviet system hadn’t deformed him.

That’s one of the tasks a great novel can do. To put someone up against great opposition and see what remains and what falls away. Shukhov isn’t honest; he isn’t kind; he isn’t smart; he doesn’t have self-control or respect or honor. The terrible system took all that from him. But by golly, he’s a good worker! And nothing in the universe can erase that.





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