Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5 A.M.—a hammer pounding on a rail outside Camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn't feel like going on banging.

The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window—from two lights on the perimeter and one inside the camp.

He didn't know why but nobody'd come to open up the barracks. And you couldn't hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank on the poles to carry it out.

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Much in the manner of Macbeth's offstage murder of his kinsman, sound or the lack of it in the opening section of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich¹ forces attention on the meaning of the hammering and the significance it has for Denisovich as it beckons his consciousness to awaken to the fact of Soviet domination and oppression. In fact the five basic sense perceptions play a distinct part in the opening section to dramatize the novel's underlying theme and to underscore the omnipresent conflict between body and spirit that manifests itself at every turn of Denisovich's day. The parallel is clear: primitive sense perception dramatizes man's instinct for freedom. Indeed, the agonizing cry of man's unquenchable need for freedom is antithetically heard in the emblematic and "ringing" Soviet hammer.

The Soviet dissection of the human personality, however, is the dominant motif as each sense registers a negative sensation. Sound or the lack of it is reiterated in all three paragraphs. In the first it becomes fused with feeling, both physical and mental. The sound of repression, "The ringing noise" of "a hammer pounding on a rail," comes "through the windowpanes covered with ice" and thus is immediately associated with the "cold," a burden from which Denisovich is never released. Contrarily, while the effect has infinitesimal ramifications for Shukhov, the anonymous bellman of oppression, who "didn't feel like going on banging," can nonchalantly rid himself of the "seventeen and a half below" (p. 10) temperature.

In the second paragraph, "the sound stopped and it was pitch black." The effect of the blackness increases the awareness of bondage. The ears strain without accompanying sight. The intensity of the shrill sound of "ringing" in an atmosphere of ice is replaced with a psychological chain. The idea pervades. Nothing breaks its terrifying grip. Within this vacuum, the blackness is given analogous meaning: "just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine." Shukhov is compelled biologically to relieve himself, and, as if to reinforce this meaning of compulsion, Solzhenitsyn then focuses on the "three yellow beams [which] fell on the window" from the compound lights. The image of prison bars, Shukhov's biological compulsion, and the blackness thus fills the vacuum with realization which the hammering sounds.

In the final paragraph silence continues as consciousness beyond awareness of bondage has not yet awakened: "He didn't know"; "nobody'd come"; "And you couldn't hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank." As the sound, sight, and feeling of enslavement is absorbed into the body, its stench is likewise registered by the residue of man's biological waste. The odor must be all encompassing, for there are two hundred men in the barracks, and the "twenty-gallon" (p. 3) tank is filled to capacity. The stench becomes as much a part of Denisovich as the air he breathes.

Of the five senses, taste is omitted. Does the absence of that sense which accompanies man's most essential physical need demand explication, or is it sufficient to note that "You couldn't help" (p. 2) licking the bowls in the morning?

Thus in the opening three paragraphs, Solzhenitsyn dramatizes how the most primitive, physical aspects of man are subjugated to Soviet domination. His body is dissected into parts, and there seems less than little difference between the labor camp inmate and his counterpart emerging from the Ice Age. And yet he does emerge with an instinct towards freedom. The "stars" (pp. 6, 18) are obscured by the compound lights, the words of Peter and Paul (pp. 28, 198) are hidden away in Alyoshka's notebook (p. 28); "It's the law of the jungle here, . . . But even here [man] can live" (p. 2). And if the reader steps back and sees the panoramic view of man emerging from darkness into the light of the "red sunrise" (p. 44) and understands the spiritual message of Peter and Paul which frames Denisovich's day, he will also perceive Solzhenitsyn hammering out his theme of man's irrepressible instinct for freedom.

Notes

¹ Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Trans. Max Hayward and Ronald Hingley. New York: Bantam Books, 1963. The opening quotation appears on p. 12 of this edition.