Job #1- Line Illuminator- Simone

One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich
Week 6
Pages 169- 178

Passage 1

"Alyosha smiled. "Thank you. But you've got nothing yourself." "Eat it."" (Page 166)

I chose this quote because this shows how nice and giving Shukhov is. In this scene, Shukhov gives Alyosha a biscuit just to be nice. But why would he do that. He is in prison and barely gets any food. I for one think that he would cherish and keep as much food as possible. But he didn't. I think Shukhov gave Alyosha a biscuit just out of generosity. Shukhov is a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia, it is winter, it is freezing, he barely has a bed to sleep on and barely has enough food to have a healthy body. He has been there for a really long time, and he isn't getting out for a very long time. And yet he has the  heart to share a biscuit. It may not seem like much, but if you put yourself in their shoes, I think it seems like a lot in that scene. Why do you think he did it? Do you think it seems like a lot to give?

Source

Passage 2

"You are being arrested. Why? Perhaps because at a dinner party you made an idle comment about politics, and what you had to say has been reported to the authorities. Or in a letter to a friend you wrote something critical of the government, and a censor has found it. Or someone you don't even know is trying to save his own ass by making accusations against you."

I chose this passage because I think it shows how silly the gulag system was. It is bad enough the government even thought of labor camps and is taking innocent people there, but they don't have to go through all of the trouble they are creating. The police have to break into your house or apartment in the middle of the night, or very early in the morning, to arrest you for an unknown reason, that they most likely don't even know themselves. They also don't have to without giving a good reasonable explanation, and not even giving them a good trial. I think this shows that the gulag system might have not had any right to exist. It had a right be a place where people go, as a jail figure. But other than that, they didn't tell you why you were being arrested, and they storm into your house in the middle of the night, when they could perfectly be doing the same thing during they day. Do you think the gulag system is silly and unreasonable?


Souce