The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 discussion

Finished up Gulag Volume I today. The last section is a description of prisoners in transit. Solzhenitsyn uses his typical style of potent humor to explain the unimaginable handling of fellow humans within the absurd system.

Throughout, the humor in the book has been at a profound level of wisdom and authority, of looking in from a place of experience The humor diffuses the trauma of the text, but also communicates a real sense of persistence and hope.

However, for the first time today, I thought the quips were going too far. His joke was something about the carts and stock trains being the common form of travel through these parts of Russia, and it struck me with a voice of spite and righteous resentment.

While obviously, the author has the highest credibility and reason to for resentment, but the magnificence of the work to this point is that the worst in Russia had not hardened his heart and faith an knowledge of truth.

For the first time, he comments that his Marxist resolve is weakening, or has become unsustaining. The bitterness may be coming out of that sense of philosophical breaking. I wonder if it is a pretense to the next volume, seeing even the author change as a character in his own work, as in the necessary development of any successful narrative.

If it is a pretense to the next volume, I'm afraid we may be coming to a very dark section. Just as I've started to know and be drawn to Solzhenitsyn's voice, I'm afraid to now see him truly struggle, and wonder how we'll both make it through.

I expect that our hope through Volume II will be the knowledge that there exists a Volume III. As in modern life, this is our hope. What a weighty text.