What is the purpose of Alyosha? Is Shukov a hero? Is there a specific moral vision at the core of this story? What is the nature of symbolism in the narrative? Join David, Heidi, and Tim as they dig into these (and other) questions about Alexksandr Solzhenitsyn’s important novel. Happy listening!
Without pondering too much, to me, this is a story of survival. (Maybe endurance is a better term.) My first reading of this book was a few years ago after finishing the abridged Gulag Archipelago, so that definitely shaped my expectations. It’s so very real - yes, I also completely trust Solzhenitsyn - and I assume autobiographical.
This time as I listened to the book I was following Ivan’s attitude, his persistent and even optimistic energy that gets him through the day - makes it even almost a good day in his life. He’s not heroic exactly, but an Everyman as Heidi said, but an Everyman who heroically faces the challenges of the day and survives - and will keep surviving. And we are confident he will at least finish his sentence, unlike Fetyukov and the Captain (though life may not be any better outside the camp.) He’s able to adapt to life in the camp, to suffering, in a way that they aren’t, through both his craftiness and humility. Alyoshka isn’t crafty, just humble. We are made to think Alyoshka couldn’t survive on his own, but his humility endears him to his companions and so ensures his survival.
Alyoshka’s character felt like a reference to Solzhenitsyn’s own experience but also a recognition of the complaints any zek or Russian might have against God or the Church. This is one of many ways in the book, I feel like Solzhenitsyn really honors his fellow prisoners and the Russian people he is writing for. We are given at once a typical day in the life of a zek, but a good day (yeesh, what if he had given us a bad day?), and also a kind of amalgamation of all the days a zek could experience. Alyoshka tells Ivan there is time in prison “to think about your soul.” Earlier Shiukov says even your thoughts aren’t free in prison. It feels risky, even irritatingly stupid, to trust in God and ask only for your daily bread after such a day of constant calculation and vigilance. Like Ivan at the end of the long day, after years of long days, we as the reader get a taste in this brief exchange of the thought of something being mere survival, bleak though even that seems.
It makes me think a lot of Shawshank Redemption, but without the redemption. I’m surprised by Ivan’s energy (the tiniest seed of hopefulness?) and when he, like Andy, thinks about like after his sentence (his wife, possible job or exile).
I struggled just a tiny bit in my interest in continuing through this book at about halfway. I really like how Heidi said "it is a world with out a story and that is the story". When I was able to put it in to perspective that nothing "dramatic" was going to happen, but that I would be changed by reading the way in which Ivan endured, then I felt how the novel was profound.
Re: heroism, I don't know about that, but he does act in service of transcendant value in the way he's determined to finish that wall - contrary to the logic of the camp where no-one really cares about the work, and just fudges things enough to keep the powers that be satisfied. He really creates stakes and acts in a way putting his "bare survival" at risk.
I thought Heidi nailed it when last week she said something to the effect of, in the first half of the book he's "holding space for meaning-making to happen to him".
I found a quote setting up this theme near the start of the book:
"Work was like a stick. It had ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eye-wash".
For me on the first read this theme is what gave an axis and direction to the book, and elevated it above being just a litany of meat-grinder level harshness and desperation.
Without pondering too much, to me, this is a story of survival. (Maybe endurance is a better term.) My first reading of this book was a few years ago after finishing the abridged Gulag Archipelago, so that definitely shaped my expectations. It’s so very real - yes, I also completely trust Solzhenitsyn - and I assume autobiographical.
This time as I listened to the book I was following Ivan’s attitude, his persistent and even optimistic energy that gets him through the day - makes it even almost a good day in his life. He’s not heroic exactly, but an Everyman as Heidi said, but an Everyman who heroically faces the challenges of the day and survives - and will keep surviving. And we are confident he will at least finish his sentence, unlike Fetyukov and the Captain (though life may not be any better outside the camp.) He’s able to adapt to life in the camp, to suffering, in a way that they aren’t, through both his craftiness and humility. Alyoshka isn’t crafty, just humble. We are made to think Alyoshka couldn’t survive on his own, but his humility endears him to his companions and so ensures his survival.
Alyoshka’s character felt like a reference to Solzhenitsyn’s own experience but also a recognition of the complaints any zek or Russian might have against God or the Church. This is one of many ways in the book, I feel like Solzhenitsyn really honors his fellow prisoners and the Russian people he is writing for. We are given at once a typical day in the life of a zek, but a good day (yeesh, what if he had given us a bad day?), and also a kind of amalgamation of all the days a zek could experience. Alyoshka tells Ivan there is time in prison “to think about your soul.” Earlier Shiukov says even your thoughts aren’t free in prison. It feels risky, even irritatingly stupid, to trust in God and ask only for your daily bread after such a day of constant calculation and vigilance. Like Ivan at the end of the long day, after years of long days, we as the reader get a taste in this brief exchange of the thought of something being mere survival, bleak though even that seems.
It makes me think a lot of Shawshank Redemption, but without the redemption. I’m surprised by Ivan’s energy (the tiniest seed of hopefulness?) and when he, like Andy, thinks about like after his sentence (his wife, possible job or exile).
I struggled just a tiny bit in my interest in continuing through this book at about halfway. I really like how Heidi said "it is a world with out a story and that is the story". When I was able to put it in to perspective that nothing "dramatic" was going to happen, but that I would be changed by reading the way in which Ivan endured, then I felt how the novel was profound.
Re: heroism, I don't know about that, but he does act in service of transcendant value in the way he's determined to finish that wall - contrary to the logic of the camp where no-one really cares about the work, and just fudges things enough to keep the powers that be satisfied. He really creates stakes and acts in a way putting his "bare survival" at risk.
I thought Heidi nailed it when last week she said something to the effect of, in the first half of the book he's "holding space for meaning-making to happen to him".
I found a quote setting up this theme near the start of the book:
"Work was like a stick. It had ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eye-wash".
For me on the first read this theme is what gave an axis and direction to the book, and elevated it above being just a litany of meat-grinder level harshness and desperation.