What I Learned in the Gulag

This reading intrigued me greatly because of its combination of casual, brutal violence with a lofty philosophical discussion. I find Solzhenitsyn's conclusions about human nature astonishing for the mere fact that he came to them at what must have been the lowest point of his life, facing starvation or a cut throat in a wretched prison cell in Siberia. Yet he sees that there is good inside every human being, just as there is evil. The point of life and religion is the struggle to control that evil, but all human hearts have the potential. It seems that oftentimes desperate circumstances bring out the worst in people: starvation means stealing bread from another, cold means taking another person's shoes. Self-preservation trumps any moral code. Solzhenitsyn, however, only sees the universality of good and evil because of his desperate circumstances. Clarity came to him through intense suffering, a remarkable achievement. In a hospital where his companion is beaten to death, he believes that "even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained." The greatness of humanity, he seems to be saying, lies in its capacity for good even in the most awful of situations and perhaps the ability to believe in that capacity.
The Gulag Archipelago