"Apart from sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is ten minutes at breakfast, five minutes over dinner, and five at supper." (Solzhenitsyn, pg.16)
This quote shows how little time the prisoners have to themselves. It also shows how little the guards care about them. The prisoners don't get any privacy what so ever, and I don't think most of the prisoners have done anything wrong. I think it was just a bad, corrupted government that caused them to become prisoners for some reason. I think it is ridiculous that they have ten minutes or less to eat, and the only time they get to themselves is to sleep and eat. I think they should have at a lot more time for themselves than what they have. I am curious about what is going to happen later on in the book. This quote made me realize that they have really bad conditions, rules, and everything else is bad too. If it is true that they really did do nothing wrong, will they come together and overthrow the guards and escape? Or will they do something else that is drastic? What do you think?
"What for, citizen chief?" "Failing to get up at reveille" (Solzhenitsyn, pg.8)
This quote says that Ivan was being punished for not getting out of bed right when he was supposed to. The guard saw him and told him he had to do three days penalty with work. Ivan knew that arguing would make it worse, so he just went with it and didn't argue. I agree that arguing would make it worse. What he did is something we all do. He didn't get out of bed when he was told too. we can relate that to our lives. I'm sure that when our alarms wake us up for school or our parents wake us up that all of us don't want to get up, and we normally don't get up right away. It would be like staying in bed for five extra minutes and having your mom tell you that you have to do some kind of extra work for the rest of the week. Or getting in a lot of trouble for something small like that. I think all of us would think that's really unfair. That is what happened in the book! I think it is very unfair to get punished for something so small like not getting out of bed when it was time to wake up.
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI really liked what you said about the first quote. I never would have thought about it the way that you did and I found your point of view very interesting. However, I have to wonder if the quote is also saying something about loneliness. I mean, he is only truly happy when he is either alone or eating how estranged must he be from other humans? In my experience, being with others is what makes people happy. So if he is not how little time must he have with others? Do they not encourage human interaction?Anyway, that is one of the many things that I think that this quote means.
Katie