Line Illuminator- Martina Tacconi #4

Week 4
Pages: 106- 133
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


1. "Writing letters now was like throwing stones into a bottomless pool. They sank without a trace. No point in telling the family which gang you worked in and what your foreman...Tyurin, was like. Nowadays you had more to say to Kildigs, the Latvian, than to the folks at home." (Section 4) 

Source
No connection with his family.

This quote is important to the novel because it's proving a feeling. As the reader, this represents reality, a feeling. The narrator isn't a real person in the story but what it does is help the reader understand how the main character is feeling. Before this quote, all the book was just description and dialogue, but with this, we are able to see how the character is feeling. He has been in that camp for around 10 years, he might have lost a bit of hope. He might not consider the people around him his "friends" but in a way, they are his family.



2. “Since then it’s been decreed that the sun is highest at one o’clock.”
“Who decreed that?”
“The Soviet government.” (Section 4)

Source
They thin they're powerful, but they really aren't.

Overall, this sound like a joke, but to the book it's important because it shows what the Soviet government is really capable of. At this point, we don't have such a clear idea of what the Soviet government is capable of, but after I read this quote it made it feel like they were the "all-powerful-union" because they could do whatever they wanted and people would have to follow. They take themselves too seriously, meaning that they think that they are capable of changing the laws of nature, just like they change the lives of the people.


3. “Come on, boys, don’t let it get you down! It’s only a Power Station, but we’ll make it a home away from home.” (Section 5)

This shows how Tyurin has changed. Toward the beginning of the book he came out as a very fearless person. After telling his story, he starts to relate to his cellmates as equals because he too was put in the camp by the government without a good reason. After this quote, the mood of the book changes, it feels as if the people in the 104 gang start to see him as an older brother, someone to talk to. That changes everything, because as the main character was saying, he wasn't truly friends with anyone, he only treated them the way he did because if one of them got in trouble, all of them would have to pay too.