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and becomes a conniving, tough, enigmatic prisoner of the
best sort. Loyal to his comrades, contemptuous of the enemy
and reactionary at any cost. One who has a lttle trouble
is the Sea Captain, who on page 38 exclaims to the guard,
"You've no right to strip people in the cold. You don't
know Article 9 of the Criminal Code." And then Solzhenitsyn
says they had the right and they knew the Article. You've
got a lot to learn brother. And then we contrast it later,
back on page 90, where that same Captain realizes that he
was feeling nice and warm in his bunk and he didn't have the
strength to get out in the freezing cold. And that this
was the sort of thing that was changing him as he learned
these things. From a bossy, loudmouth naval officer into
a slow moving and cagey prisoner. And the third thing that
I would notice in this book and one that is disconnected
from those first two ideas, is the discussion back in the
back on page 195 between Ivan and his bunkmate, a devout
Christina, about prayer. I think the message that the Christian
is trying to tell him is the one with which I am so familiar,
Also Emerson
that it is unbecoming our dignity to pray for things. We
didn't pray for that Ivan, Alyoshka said. The only thing
on this earth that the Lord has ordered us to pray for is
our daily bread. And of course by that he doesn't mean rations.

Now the very text on this subject of the problems of
good and evil was the Book of Job. We read it from the

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