Analysis
Shukhov's relationship with his prisonmates is morally
ambiguous. On one hand, he shows pity on another human in a way
that he has never done before in the novel when he feels sorry for
the sobbing and bloody Fetyukov, who has been beaten up for licking
the bowls. Shukhov's compassion shows his basic good-heartedness,
even after so many years of camp hardships. But on the other hand,
Shukhov's generosity is motivated by a desire for repayment. He
lends Tsezar his folding knife to cut sausages because he calculates
that he will get a payback for his good deed later, not because
he intends good will. Shukhov also shows a lack of brotherly love
when he finds out that his hutmate Buynovsky has been sentenced
to ten days in the hole. Shukhov reacts with no emotion, merely
noting that “there was not much you could say.” In the end, Shukhov
is only human, and under the stressful conditions of camp life moral
considerations are often a second priority to self-preservation
instincts.
In the final paragraphs of the novel, Shukhov begins to
care less about doing favors in order to receive payback and more
about doing favors for the sake of helping others. The dialogue
between Shukhov and Alyoshka shows how Shukhov begins to accept
Alyoshka's Christian philosophy. Alyoshka is a Baptist, belonging
to a Christian denomination that emphasizes the possibility of changing one's
life. Although Shukhov is not religious, he experiences a moral rebirth
during his theological conversation with Alyoshka. After this conversation,
Shukhov performs his first truly generous act in the novel: he gives
Alyoshka one of his precious biscuits. Shukhov knows that Alyoshka
never expects payback for the favors he does, so Shukhov himself
does not expect a payback for this biscuit. This gift to Alyoshka
is selfless, not calculated. In this moment, Shukhov is a giver
for the first time in the novel, showing that in some small way,
he has become a new person.
The ending of the novel implies that happiness is possible
in the most dire of situations. Shukhov's contentment that “it was
almost a happy day” is surprising when contrasted with the misery
of the novel's early moments. Shukhov's trajectory in the novel,
from abject misery to hard work to contentment and religion at the
end, mimics Dante's religious epic poem The Divine Comedy, which influenced
Solzhenitsyn deeply. In The Divine Comedy, Dante
travels from hell, through purgatory, to heaven. Like Dante, Shukhov moves
from discomfort to bliss, and from material existence to spiritual
transcendence. Shukhov's journey is interior, in his soul. From an
outside perspective, his existence in the labor camp seems dismal and
not at all uplifting—as the narrator reminds us when he reports that
this day is only one of the 3,653 days of
Shukhov's sentence. Shukhov's triumph, however, is his ability to
find meaning in an environment that seeks to strip it completely
from his life
