The Snake Charmer (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Varlam Shalamov
- First Published: 1978
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The mid-1930's to the mid-1950's
- Setting: A forced-labor camp in the Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Platonov, Fedya
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Prisoners, Survivalism, Siberia or Siberians, Labor camps
- Locales: Siberia
The Story
Two political prisoners are sitting on a fallen tree during a work break. One of them, a former screenwriter named Platonov, is telling the narrator the story of his “second life,” his life in the camps. It turns out that Platonov has spent a year at the Jankhar mine, a place notorious even by the standards of Kolyma, a region of northeastern Siberia.
Platonov explains, however, that only the first few months were bad. The only political prisoner—therefore the only educated one—among common criminals, he survived the year at Jankhar by telling the...
[The entire page is 1562 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
See Also
