Key Facts
full title ·
Journey into the Whirlwind
author · Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg
type of work · Autobiography
genre · Memoir, historical account, reportage
language · Russian, translated into English by Paul Stevenson and Max
Hayward
time and place written · Written in Russia after the author's release from prison in the
mid-1950s
date of first publication · 1967
publisher · Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
narrator · Eugenia Ginzburg
point of view · The entire story is told in the first person by Ginzburg, who observed
it all and recounts the events of her incarceration with an astonishing memory
for detail and dialogue. At several points along the way, Ginzburg tells stories
that she has herself been told by fellow inmates, but these are brief
interruptions of her own personal history.
tone · Reflective, journalistic, philosophical, sentimental at times and
objective at others
tense · Past tense
setting (time) · From December 1934 through mid-1940
setting (place) · Various parts of Russia: the author's town of Kazan, the Russian city
of Moscow, the prison at Yaroslavl, and the prison camps at Vladivostok,
Magadan, and Elgen
protagonist · Eugenia Ginzburg
major conflict · Ginzburg's arrest in 1937, her interrogation at Black Lake, and her
trial, sentencing, imprisonment, and reassignment to the corrective labor camps
of Eastern Russia
rising action, climax, and falling action · As Ginzburg's book is a memoir, not fiction, it cannot be said to
follow a deliberately artistic narrative structure involving rising action,
climax, and falling action. Instead of these three discrete elements, Ginzburg's
text, true to her real experiences, has many moments of building suspense, many
climaxes, and many consequences.
· Ginzburg's two years of solitary confinement do serve as a type of
rising action, and the resulting climax is Ginzburg's reassignment to a
corrective labor facility and the monthlong train journey into Siberia, at the
end of which she finds herself in Kolyma. The falling action, which occurs over
the brief span of two pages, is her reassignment to the gentler job of medical
attendant.
themes · The will to survive; the desire for companionship; the need for
communication
motifs · Poetry; motion and stasis; food
symbols · Phone calls; watches
foreshadowing · As this work is autobiographical and historical, foreshadowing does not
appear in the typical sense, though there are several significant coincidences.
Julia Karepova, a fellow passenger in the Black Maria in an early section of the
book, later becomes Ginzburg's cellmate at Yaroslavl. Major Yelshin, who is so
cruel to Ginzburg during her interrogation, becomes a prisoner at Kolyma while
Ginzburg is working in the kitchen. Perhaps the most overt example of
autobiographical foreshadowing is when Professor Elvov tells Ginzburg that he is
being arrested and that he is sorry for causing her trouble because of their
association. Although Ginzburg protests at the time and cannot understand why
she should be worried, it is her association with Elvov that eventually dooms
her.
