    (c) 1991 Bureau Development, Inc.

    File: \DP\0197\01970.TXT         Wed Mar 10 00:44:06 1993
Database: Monarch Notes By Author


$Unique_ID{MON01970}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Analysis Of 'One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich'}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Solzhenitsyn, Alexander}
$Affiliation{Professor Of Continuing Education, New York University}
$Subject{ivan
day
shukhov
solzhenitsyn
camp
life
denisovich
like
character
infirmary}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Book:        One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
Author:      Solzhenitsyn, Alexander
Critic:      Weeks, Albert L.
Affiliation: Professor Of Continuing Education, New York University

Analysis Of "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich"

     "Solzhenitsyn is the heir, not only of the best tendencies in early
socialist realism, but also of the great literary tradition, and above all
that of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky," wrote Georg Lukacs, the octogenarian Marxist
literary critic of Communist Hungary. In mentioning Dostoyevsky in the same
breath with Solzhenitsyn and One Day, Lukacs is of course mindful of the fact
that Dostoyevsky, too, wrote a book about life under the conditions of
Siberian exile (House of the Dead, 1862). He may also have remembered that
House of the Dead was exactly 100 years old when its Soviet successor, One
Day, burst into print. Unlike Dostoyevsky's book, however, One Day is not full
of the horrors of camp life, nor does it indulge in the kind of polemics one
finds in the vehement condemnation of Siberian exile in Dostoyevsky's novel.
There are other differences, too. Dostoyevsky employed the first person;
Solzhenitsyn for the most part does not. Dostoyevsky's prisoners, for all the
extreme conditions of the Tsarist penal colonies, fare somewhat better than
their counterparts under the Lenin-Stalin camps-Tsarist prisoners, at least
had adequate food, clothing, and spare time. (One is reminded of Lenin's own
relatively short sojourn in Siberian exile and how this intelligentka was able
to fish, swim, ski, write revolutionary articles, and send and receive
uncensored mail!) Finally, the prisoners of 100 years ago always had the
thought in the back of their minds that some day they would be freed; Ivan
Shukhov and his friends, the characters of Solzhenitsyn's One Day, often
viewed their terms as endless; "they are bored with counting" the remaining
years in their stretches.

     Although Lukacs compares Solzhenitsyn to Tolstoy, we have already noted
how different were their two perspectives on the past, on history. Their
methods of telling a story are quite different, too. In true
nineteenth-century style, Tolstoy builds long descriptions of his characters
(not unlike the technique employed by Dickens), as he places them in a
multitude of situations and episodes, often analyzing their reactions in
minute detail. Solzhenitsyn on the other hand brushes in his characterizations
with the light touch of a watercolorist. Moreover, in the supercooled
treatment of Shukhov, for example, the emotional coloring becomes the pale
blue of a mild-winter Siberian sky while characters' mental reactions to this
or that privation or inhumane act in the labor camp seems to be as
neutral-white as snow.

     One Western critic sees a resemblance in style between Solzhenitsyn and
Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. Chekhov, of course, is famous for
understatement and sparseness of emotion, although the situation (as in the
mother-son confrontation in Sea Gull) may be potentially supercharged with
emotional tension. For the audience, it's "all the same," as Chekhov's
characters are wont to utter - in that, the emotional charge is all the
greater for having been understated. Perhaps the key word for Solzhenitsyn's
and Chekhov's approaches to life is "laconism": i.e., a semblance of
taciturnity, of conciseness and economy, both of mood and expression. In the
First Circle, the main character Nerzhin makes a remark which illustrates the
laconic streak in Solzhenitsyn: "Descriptions of prison life tend to overdo
the horror of it. Surely it is more frightening when there is no actual
(nastoyashchiy) terror; what is truly terrifying is the changeless routine
which followed year after year." Solzhenitsyn could even speak ironically of
the Gulag Archipelago, in the Preface to the work of the same name, as "that
monstrous world that I have come almost to love," it is not "something
shameful [or] a nightmare."

     The very opening of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich sets the tone
for the whole story. "V pyat' chasov utra, kak vsegda..." "At five o'clock in
the morning, like always..." In this way, the author indicates that what he is
about to relate will be nothing out of the ordinary. The prisoner Ivan Shukhov
is waking up on a usual, cold, camp day - or, as we learn, on a day which
turned out to be not quite as cold as other days ("it was nowhere near -
41C."); at the very end of the story, we learn that this one day was "without
a dark cloud; almost a happy day." But we would not likely gather that it was
so "happy," except in a sardonic sense.

Cinematic Quality

     Solzhenitsyn continues opening his story with straightforward,
unemotional descriptions of Shukhov's surroundings. Ice two-fingers-thick on
the window panes. The nameless campguard sounding reveille by clanging on a
piece of track rail with a huge hammer. The pitch darkness of the early
morning with only a dim, yellow glow cast on the frozen window pane by three
electric lights, "two in the outer area, one inside the camp itself." No
wonder that the screenwriter and producers of the film version could see the
movie possibilities of such descriptions, from the very opening words of Ivan
Denisovich. In the movie scenario, the opening of Scene 1 was scripted as
follows:

     "Fade In

     "1 Ext. The Camp-High Angle (Helicopter Shot) - Before Dawn

     From a distance the camp looks like a solitary star in the cosmos:
it glows a sickly yellow; its circles of light are no more than a luminous
blur. Beyond the star, as far as the eye can see, is snow.

     "It seems like the middle of the night.

     "It is intensely cold.

     "The Camera Moves In Very Slowly

     Superimpose Main Titles And Titles

     Gradually it becomes possible to distinguish more of the area of the
camp:two powerful searchlights sweeping from watchtowers on the outer
perimeter; a circle of border lights marks the barbed wire fences; the shapes
of the huts and other buildings become discernible; the gates,the near
watchtowers with their guards and machine guns, the prison block, the mess
hall, the staff quarters.

"End Credits And Titles...

"Cut To

"2 Int. Hut 9 - Before Dawn

"Under a blanket and a coat lies Ivan Denisovich..."

     Incidentally, the film, jointly produced by Group W Films, Norsk Films,
and Leontes Productions in 1970, was shot under the most adverse and realistic
of conditions. Sub-zero temperatures in the Norwegian village of Roros had the
actors Tom Courtenay (Ivan Shukhov), Espen Skjonberg (Tiurin), et al., in a
state of almost perpetual shivers. This prompted Courtenay to remark at the
end of the 11 weeks of shooting, "I feared the worst, but when I got there [to
the Norwegian location], I enjoyed the cold, I enjoyed fighting it. It was ...
a single-minded and pure atmosphere." Solzhenitsyn saw and liked the picture.
He called it "good [and] honest," although it lacked "Russian local color."

     Needless to say, the main character of One Day is Ivan Denisovich
Shukhov. He is the first character to appear in the story and his presence is
constantly with us throughout the whole. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn makes use of
his main character in a number of ways. First, we view much of the physical
and spiritual life of the Siberian "special camp" for political prisoners
through Ivan Denisovich's eyes-sometimes as dialogue and sometimes as a
third-person observer; at times an invisible narrator describes situations in
which the main character is not placed or in which he could not be present in
any case.

Self-Respecting Characters

     Second, in Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn has hewn a sharply-angled
character whose economy of speech is as lean as his body, whose mind is as
crystal clear as the icicles which form from the sweat dripping from his brow.
But he is not a grim man facing his last three years of camp confinement with
bitterness and humorlessness. On the contrary, Shukhov has at once an
animal-like determination to survive and a human-like compulsion even to
prosper (as well as can be under the circumstances). Shukhov never succumbs
to corruption or to any serious immorality whatsoever; he and most of the
other dozen main characters in the story maintain their self-respect, and do
so with quiet, unassuming pride.

     Third, by focusing principally on one character, the author is able to
"dissect" his personality, his reactions to the various demands placed upon
him, and to present in microcosm, like a miniaturized Russian Easter egg, the
millions of other prisoners who endured similar or probably worse fates in
the hundreds of other labor camps under Lenin and Stalin, and their
successors. As the scenario of the film version reads, "The camp looks like a
solitary star in the cosmos." So does Ivan Denisovich. But in concentrating
on Shukhov, Solzhenitsyn does not isolate him from the others. Instead, we
compare and contrast other prisoners' reactions to the same ordeals, or
opportunities, with Shukhov's. Take for example, the somewhat fanatic Baptist
prisoner, Alyosha, whose name is a bit of double entendre on the author's
part for we are, and at the same time we are not, reminded of the "religious
brother," Alyosha of the three Brothers Karamazov. Alyosha (or Alyoshka)
reads his Bible aloud, tries to convert his colleagues, including Shukhov, to
his form of religion, but turns off Ivan Denisovich with his (Alyosha's)
excessive concern, it seems to Ivan, with heaven and hell rather than with
the moral character of Jesus. At one point, Alyosha intones, "'Give us this
day our daily bread'!" Whereupon Shukhov remarks, "Our bread ration, don't
you mean?"

     In the minute analysis of Shukhov, we get the picture of a largely stoic,
almost submissive but definitely not "resigned" individual who has served out
7 of his 10 years at the camp for criminal-types (non-political) at
Ust-Izhma in the north and is now down the home stretch at the second,
somewhat less severe camp for "politicals." Although he is surrounded by
various forms of inhumanity and degradation (mainly on the part of camp
officials and their toadies among the prisoners), Shukhov and his comrades do
not submit to any of the sundry temptations. Instead of "gold-bricking," they
take pride in the various work assignments that they perform. This is
especially true of Ivan Denisovich; moreover, his diligence is not artificial.
It rather comes natural to him. In his various imperfections, which tend to be
minor and "expected" under the circumstances, the main character becomes
completely credible and sympathetic without being mawkishly so.

Solzhenitsyn And The Classical Trinity.

     One of the most insightful discussions of Solzhenitsyn's main character
may be found in Lopukhina-Rodzyanko's The Spiritual Roots of Solzhenitsyn's
Writings (published by Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, in Russian).
Lopukhina-Rodzyanko finds a heightened spiritual, even religious,
consciousness in most of the author's works and in One Day in particular. Not
only, she writes, is Solzhenitsyn committed to the classical trinity of
Beauty, Truth, and Justice, he links the personal conscience of each of his
heroes to universal human justice and social consciousness. In the personal
lives of his heroes-Ivan Denisovich's, for example - the character ekes out
a spiritually satisfying existence no matter how trying the circumstances
because of the character's "harmoniously structured psyche." Ivan Denisovich's
psyche possesses this inner harmony, since in an almost "geological sense"
Shukhov is an archetypical peasant-representative of Mother Russia; Shukhov's
moral fiber is from the people and is spontaneous. Somewhat passive though he
may be, Ivan is not meek like Alyosha and is not prepared to make a surrender
as Alyosha is; he will not be overcome. The critic also finds in Ivan
Denisovich Shukhov an elemental comradeliness, a desire to come to the
assistance of his fellow zeks. Ivan tends to regard his work team as a "second
family." For it, he is prepared to cross mountains or take any risk. Ivan's
human traits and basically sympathetic nature reveal itself at the end of the
day when he sees the brigade leader, Fetiukov, downtrodden and weeping.
"Shukhov pities Fetiukov because the brigade leader lacks a satisfactory
approach to life, which is so clear and natural to Shukhov,"
Lopukhina-Rodzyanko writes.

Meaning Of Names

     On the matter of the character's name, Lopukhina-Rodzyanko, sharing the
view of some other critics, believes that the names Ivan and Alyosha were
deliberately invented by Solzhenitsyn to suggest a parallel with the
characters of the same first names in The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov
also denies the existence or even the use of heaven and hell, unlike Alyosha
Karamazov who defends their existence and necessity. Both Ivans love life and
people, both wish to lighten the burden of existence on earth, as,
theoretically, so also did the Grand Inquisitor. Still, Solzhenitsyn separates
love of man from love of abstract justice; both his and Dostoyevsky's
Alyoshas place the latter higher than the former. Solzhenitsyn himself
remarked on this point in his "Answer to Three Students": "Love of justice
seems to me to be different from love for one's fellow man (or, at least, is
only partially equivalent to it)." Thus, Alyosha the Baptist (in One Day)
may seem to be a character who is spiritually superior to the hero, Ivan
Denisovich. "Alyosha the Baptist," writes Lopukhina-Rodzyanko, "is the most
striking symbol of the righteous man in all the writings of Solzhenitsyn."

Biblical Parallels

     Finally, the critic notes the striking parallel between the "temptations"
confronting Ivan Denisovich in the camp and the temptations of Christ
described by Matthew in the Gospels, 4:1-10. For forty days and forty nights,
Christ was tempted by the Devil in the desert. In the first temptation, the
Devil challenges Jesus to convert stones into bread. To which Jesus replies:
"Man shall not live by bread alone." In the second temptation, the Devil takes
Christ to the holy city and places Him "on the pinnacle of the temple and
saith unto Him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down ... Jesus said
unto him ... Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God." In the third
temptation, the Devil takes him up a high mountain and shows Jesus "all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory.... All these things I will give thee
if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Jesus answers the Devil: "Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

     The analogy to the first Biblical temptation in One Day is the
not-by-bread-alone quality of life in the camp.

At one point in the story, Shukhov remarks that you have to eat "with all
your mind on the food," not like in the past before confinement when this
distortion of values did not exist. In another part, Shukhov notes "your life
is ruled by a couple of ounces of bread."

     As to the second temptation, Solzhenitsyn teaches that man's survival (in
camp or anywhere else) cannot depend on miracles or challenges put to the
Lord, as it were. In One Day, this is seen in the notion that sick-call, or
the reliance on the infirmary in order to survive, is not only an easy way out
of the ordeal of living and working in the "white desert," or in Siberian
exile, it is no solution at all. It is merely a weak-willed, temporary,
"miraculous" solution for overcoming difficulties. Ivan Denisovich feels
shamefaced about going on sick-call on that morning unless he is really very
ill. The narrator notes, as Ivan sits in the infirmary awaiting the orderly,
Kolya: "The infirmary seemed alien to him." In the end, he is relieved to find
out that he is not sick, that his temperature is under 100 degrees. At the end
of the story, proudly he remarks that he has gotten through this one day
without being sick. Sickness - the "miracle," in this case-was avoided; man
will survive on his own terms, without miraculous intervention. The infirmary
represents a renunciation of man's will, his dependence on a miracle. Man has
his fate in his own hands, says Solzhenitsyn, whether this concerns his health
or the preservation of his conscience.

     The parallelism with the third Biblical temptation relates to the zeks'
refusal to bow down to any Satans among them-when they have the choice, as
they do when their wills are free to express themselves, as in fighting hunger
and cold. Only when they are not in a position to exert their wills, to assert
their humanity, are they subject to the commands of the Devil, as represented
by the camp authorities and the System. Anyone in One Day who swindles his way
through his stretch and who greases his palms or plays "King Rat" (from James
Clavell's novel) is scorned as a person who submits to Satan. Kolya, who works
in a warm, "cushy" job in the infirmary - the "sharashka" arrangement
(technicians in a special prison or section of a prison) - has sold his soul
to the Devil.

Other Characters And Main Episodes

     The slivers of life strung together in One Day suggest the film-strip
quality of the daily life of any individual. In a single day, there are little
stings, little happinesses, little letdowns, etc., but these rivulets seem to
flow in and out of the larger stream of our very natures, of our whole lives.
As in any individual's day, there are a number of brief encounters, or "knots"
of action. In such encounters, we reveal ourselves to others just as others
reveal themselves to us.

     Within the matrix of such episodes in One Day, the moods characters, and
the narrative follow their various serpentine trails; at the same time, the
undercurrent of Solzhenitsyn's special philosophy of life engulfs all these
partialities.

Solzhenitsyn's Irony

     Take the thermometer episode early on in the story. Several squad
leaders, on their way to the Planning and Production Division (P.P.D.), gather
near a pole upon which a large thermometer is affixed. One of the younger men,
a former Hero of the Soviet Union, shinnies up the pole and wipes off the
gauge.

     "Don't breathe on it," someone shouts, "or it'll go up."

     "Go up? Fucking likely that would happen. I won't change it!" Then he
reads the temperature which is a "modest" - 27.5 C. Someone observes: "It's
never right. It always lies. . . But then, why hang up an accurate one,
anyway?"

     The "it-always-lies" remark, the irony of a Hero of the Soviet Union
doing the job of reading the thermometer, is the author's way of showing that
even that most important matter to the prisoners - the degree of "frost" on
any given day which determines whether and what kind of work will be performed
on that day - is the subject of "lying." (One is here reminded of a short
writing - and appeal - by Solzhenitsyn entitled, Live Not According to a Lie.)
Also, as Solzhenitsyn frequently shows, the general mass of the prisoners
sometimes display an anarchic, don't-give-a-damn attitude toward the camp and
their life in it. This makes a striking contrast to the high seriousness with
which Ivan Denisovich and his group of some dozen prisoners for the most part
regard their life and the preservation of their humanity and of principle. It
seems scarcely likely that the more upstanding of characters, such as KILGAS
for example, would ever relish the fact of the thermometer's being inaccurate.
"Why hang up an accurate one, anyway" would probably not be uttered by the
more conscientious types among Ivan's colleagues.

     In an encounter, also early in the book, between a guard and Ivan, Ivan
has unintentionally splashed some water on the guard's boots (valenki).

     "Hey there, scum, watch what you're doing!" Ivan thereupon must clean the
guard's soiled boot. Apparently, he accidentally uses too much water as he
tries to clean it and the guard exclaims, "Hey, idiot! How much water are you
going to use!"

     "I'll never get it clean otherwise, Citizen Chief. It's thick with mud,"
Ivan replies.

     "Didn't you ever observe your wife scrubbing the floor, you swine!"
Whereupon Ivan remarks ingenuously-neither out of malice nor self-pity: "I was
taken from my wife in '41, Citizen Chief. I've quite forgotten just what she
was like." The guard then observes, quite out of "synch" with what Ivan has
just said: "That's the way the scum wash. . . . They don't know how to do a
fucking thing and they don't want to learn, either. They're not worth the
bread (khleb) we give them. What we ought to do is feed them shit."

     In this encounter, or "knot," the author shows us the essentially stolid
insensitivity of the guard element in the camp. Since he frequently shows
lines of continuity running between life inside and life outside the camp in
normal Soviet society, this episode illustrates, as many others do, the
brutishness of a "Citizen Chief." There are many "Citizen Chiefs" on the other
side of the barbed wire, too. Another use of this episode is to show that the
guard is so uncaring that he does not realize that Ivan Denisovich is someone
who does know how to do something, as we see as the story progresses. In fact,
the narrator (the author concealed) asserts soon after this scene, "Shukhov
knew how to cope with anything." As he is washing the floor in this same
scene, the observation is made that "work is like a stick. It has two ends.
When you work for those who know the difference, you give them a quality
performance. But for the fools, you put on a show (pokazukhu)."

     In the mess hall scene-at the first meal of the day on that one day-it is
a "rare occasion" since Ivan can go right in without the usual long wait
(again: the "one day" is not so bad, as days go!). This situation affords the
author the opportunity to observe the incarcerated men, with so little to
lose, engaged in the potentially civilized business of feeding themselves. Are
they pigs? Or do they comport themselves almost like gentlemen? How do they
relate to each other at such a delicate time, when it might well be "every man
for himself"?

     The first thing we learn is that the food is meager and miserable. The
men are obliged to get along with bits of fish and cabbage leaves. Some
breakfast! But "to spit the bones on the floor was considered somehow to be
bad manners." We are introduced here to FETIUKOV; he is the man who holds
Shukhov's meal for him since Shukhov was delayed by a side trip to the guard
house, where he thought he was going to be penalized for having arisen a bit
late at reveille; as it was, he got off free, thanks to a nameless Tartar
guard. Fetiukov is described as low man on the totem pole, as far as the other
members of Shukhov's barracks team are concerned; a man you give little jobs
to, like watching after your plate if you were late, he is also described as a
"jackal."

     Next, Shukhov removes from his boot that all-important implement which he
never overlooks and which he looks after with such care: his spoon. The spoon
had been with him at the northern camp, too, and he had made it-cast
it-himself. Taking his hat off (another gesture to civilization, but one which
Ivan Denisovich takes most seriously), he starts in on the cold gruel. The
author notes wrily that the gruel had not been poured either from the top or
from the bottom of the boiling pot. A medium serving, in other words, not
unlike the day as a whole - not good, not bad. "Fetiukov wouldn't be above
filching a spud as he guarded [Ivan's] bowl." Ivan likes the gruel mainly
because it is hot. And he eats it with his usual deliberateness - "no need to
rush-even if the roof caught on fire." Minutes count under such
circumstances: "Not counting sleeping hours, a prisoner lived for himself for
only 10 minutes in the morning at breakfast, 5 minutes at lunch, and 5 more
at suppertime."

     Observations are made by the unseen narrator about the condition of the
food at various times of the year. June is the best year-groats instead of
tasteless vegetables. July was the worst time-shredded nettles boiled in
water.

Pity For A Fish?

     As he proceeds to extract every morsel of fish from the almost skeletal
mass lying in his bowl, his every action is described by the narrator. Tail,
fins, gills, head-all chewed and swallowed. As for the eyes, Ivan, we're told,
treats them with a certain respect, much to the amusement of the other
prisoners, who tease him for it. If the fish eyes are in the head, they get
eaten along with the head, but if they are floating in the liquid mass of
bones and flesh, Ivan leaves them be. Solzhenitsyn makes no comment on this
and we are left wondering why Shukhov would do this. Is it perhaps, out of a
faint sense of pity-even for a mere fish?

     After the gruel and fish comes the porridge made of magara, a "Chinese"
oatmeal. This is served to him in a frozen block which must be broken into
little pieces, like chopping ice. Quite tasteless, it is actually a kind of
grass.

     The next scene is also illustrative of life in the labor camp as well as
Soviet life in general.

Revealing Infirmary Episode

     Shukhov had arisen that morning feeling ill. Because of this he had
awakened late. This is an offense, so his first trip had been to the guard
house, where he had been let off, thanks to the Tartar. Then he had gone for
breakfast. He had almost decided not to go to the infirmary while he was
mopping the floor in the guard house (where the spilling accident had taken
place) - the work made him feel better, at least for the moment. But after the
meal, he thought he would have to go after all. (Note here that Ivan
Denisovich is not "exploiting" sick call; also that the brief spell of work
he did on his hands and knees made him feel somewhat better.) He even passed
up a "connection" between himself and the Tall Latvian whose packages sent
from outside sometimes contained fragrant tobacco for rolling into cigarettes.
The infirmary episode is one of the most revealing of the story. Nor was it
overlooked by the scenarist, Ronald Harwood, in doing the movie version of
One Day.

     Upon entering the infirmary, Ivan finds that nobody is about: "The
doctors can't be out of bed yet." But Kolya (short for Nikolai) Vdovushkin,
a "medical assistant," is sitting behind a "clean little table and is dressed
in a sparkling white coat." He is writing and Shukhov notices that whatever
it is he is writing, it is not infirmary or camp business-probably "something
private and none of [Ivan's] business." Ivan says, somewhat shamefacedly,
"Listen, Nikolai Semyonich, I'm feeling ... sort of ... under the
weather."

     "Why are you so late?" comes the abrupt remark from the orderly. He
treats Shukhov coarsely, although he knows that Ivan Denisovich does not often
go on sick call, is no hypochondriac or sick-bay lounger. Kolya shoves a
thermometer into him, grudgingly (the infirmary has already used up its quota
of two morning sick-callees), as he comments that Shukhov has come to the
infirmary just before assembly and body count. While his temperature is being
taken, Shukhov has a few more precious minutes to himself. He notes that the
number, 111-584, is fading from his jacket. - "It better be repainted if he
wants to keep out of trouble." He feels the growth of a beard on his face -
"Quiet a stubble since his last bath more than 10 days ago." That would be
remedied in just three days when bath time rolled around again. "Why wait in a
long barber's line? There was no one to beautify himself for."

     Shukhov also muses about the Doctor, Stepan Grigorich. He was a
loud-mouthed individual, contemptuous of patients, a man who had never
himself known any physical labor ("If he had spent a little time laying block,
then he would keep his mouth shut, you can be sure."). Moreover, the
doctor's notion of convalescence was for patients to do heavy manual labor.
The narrator observes: "He should have understood that even a horse can die
of overwork."

     Shukhov turns again to observe Kolya. Ah! He's writing poetry. Well,
after all, he is a former literature major, not a medical student, a young
man whom the doctor found quite useful to perform various tasks for him-quite
illegitimately, since the young man was giving "ignorant" prisoners
intravenous injections. "Medical Assistant" was only a label pinned on him
by the doctor. Moreover, it seems the doctor rather relished his assistant's
poetry; he could write verses in prison which he "had not been able to write
as a free man." The assistant, it seems, had once been arrested, apparently in
college, but for what we are not told.

     Like everything else about the one day, Shukhov's temperature was neither
high nor low but rather indifferent. It was under 99 degrees; it had to
register 100 degrees to call the patient "sick." "I can't keep you here as a
sick one," Kolya asserts, "but if you want to stay at your own risk..." He
informs Shukhov that if the doctor pronounces him ill, O.K.; but if it turns
out he is not ill, "It'll be the cells [solitary] for you." Finally, Kolya
advises Ivan to go on to work. Shukhov receives the advice in total silence,
makes no gesture, pulls the cap over his eyes, and exits. The narrator
comments: "There's no point in expecting someone who's warm to understand
someone who's cold."

