Section 4
From the narration of Shukhov's leaving home to the
beginning of work at the Power Station
The narrator reveals that the story takes place in 1951.
We also find out that Shukhov left home around ten years earlier,
on June 23, 1941,
when the Soviet Union entered World War II.
Shukhov wonders about the news from back home. He is entitled to
write two letters per year, but he reflects on the futility of doing
so. He has more to talk about with his fellow camp inmates than
with his family. He recalls his wife's letter's report that the kolkhoz, or
collective farm, on which she works has a new head, and other tedious
announcements he has little interest in hearing.
One thing his wife mentions does interest Shukhov, however.
She says that some people are becoming wealthy by making carpets
out of sheets with designs stenciled on them. This work is not government-controlled,
she notes, so some bribery is required. She urges her husband to
consider taking up this work when he gets out of the camp. Shukhov
acknowledges the practicality of this plan but has no interest in
dyeing carpets. He also resents the idea of giving bribes. He reflects
that he may be forty and balding with poor teeth, but he does not
want to stoop to bribery as a way of life.
The gang has reached the Power Station work site. Shukhov notices
Alyoshka smiling blissfully, and reflects on how camp life has not
destroyed Alyoshka's religious faith. Even the sentence delivered
to Alyoshka and to other Baptists in the camp, twenty-five years
of hard labor, means nothing to them. Shukhov waits for orders from
the foreman, Tyurin, a beefy pockmarked man whom Shukhov knew at
his first camp, Ust-Izhma. Tyurin is a strong, silent type who inspires
respect in everyone. Shukhov notes that one twitch of Tyurin's eyebrow
will send a prisoner off to do a task.
Gang 104 enters the auto-repair
shop on the building site, where another gang has been making concrete
slabs. The other gang is resting by the stove. Gang 104 also
enjoys a brief moment of peace before the work begins. His back
aching, Shukhov sits and slowly eats his hidden half-ration of bread.
He watches two Estonian inmates chat. The gang discusses when the
next blizzard will come: a blizzard means days off work. Though
they know that all missed days will be made up later, they still
yearn for a holiday.
Tyurin informs the gangmembers that they will wall in
the second story. The gang realizes that it must stop up the windows
to retain some heat in which to work. A Latvian inmate named Kildigs remembers
having hidden some tar paper, and proposes to go with Shukhov to
fetch it. On their way to get the tar paper, they meet some men
from another gang who are digging fence holes in stony frozen ground.
Shukhov and Kildigs find the tar paper and carry it back to the
site upright between them, so as not to attract the attention of
the guards. Back at the site, the next step is to build laths on which
to mount the paper, and to repair the mortar trough. The narrator
asks why the inmates show such industry instead of dawdling through
the day. His answer is that every man is responsible for the fate
of his gang: he works not only for himself but for the others too, since
they would all be punished together for any failing.
Analysis
Writing letters now was like throwing
stones into a bottomless pool. They sank without a trace.
Shukhov's lack of desire to communicate with the outside
world reflects his feeling that self-expression is pointless. Shukhov
takes pleasure in simple physical comforts, such as food and warmth, rather
than in intellectual discussions or creative pursuits in which he
might offer his views on life. Just as he is better served by Kolya when
Kolya stops writing poems and attends to his sickness, so is Shukhov
better served by tending to his physical needs than by attempting
to make sense of his world. Shukhov's world has shrunk in the time
that he has been confined to the camp. His musing that he has nothing
to say to his wife and two daughters back home demonstrates how
unable he is to think about anything beyond the daily aspects of
camp life, such as acquiring food and avoiding punishment. Though
Solzhenitsyn shows that Shukhov is uneducated, he does not blame
him for not wanting to communicate his experiences. Rather, Solzhenitsyn
understands that in such dehumanizing circumstances, one necessarily
becomes cynical about the worth of trying to share traumatic experiences
with those who have not undergone them.
Ironically, Shukhov exemplifies the principles of the
Soviet state he is accused of having betrayed. Although he is in
prison for treason against the Soviet regime, his mindset and work
habits represent a pinnacle of Soviet industriousness. He has left
the middle-class household far behind, and his work site has become
his life—in exactly the way the Soviet regime intended it to happen
according to Communist theory. The fact that Shukhov feels closer
to his fellow inmates now than to his own family illustrates the
early Soviet ideal of eliminating middle-class family life and making
a worker care more about the international working class (that is,
foreign workers—like the Latvian Kildigs) than about his or her
own spouse or offspring. Solzhenitsyn shows us how radically the
camp world can infuse its prisoners with Soviet values, much more
effectively than Soviet society outside can do.
Shukhov's reaction to his wife's suggestion that he manufacture dyed
carpets shows that his economic viewpoint, like his work habit,
embraces Soviet ideals. The carpet-dyeing, not sanctioned by the
Soviet government, is a capitalist endeavor that affords its practitioners
dazzling private fortunes. Shukhov resists the prospect of making
these fortunes because he does not want to engage in meaningless
work. Compared to the personal satisfaction of building a power
station by hand, the job of stenciling sheets seems vulgar and meaningless
to Shukhov. Ironically, Shukhov's labor camp work appears more meaningful
than much of the work carried out in free Soviet society.
