Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Autobiographical novel
In The Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn depicts the life of an entire state using the example of one hospital ward. The author manages to convey the social and psychological situation of the era, its originality on such seemingly small material as the image of the life of several cancer patients, who, by the will of fate, ended up in the same hospital building. All heroes are not just different people with different characters; each of them is a carrier certain types consciousness generated by the era of totalitarianism. It is also important that all the heroes are extremely sincere in expressing their feelings and defending their beliefs, as they face death.
In Cancer Ward, two heroes collide. One, the prototype of which is to some extent the writer himself, Oleg Kostoglotov, a former front-line sergeant who was awaiting death in the oncological dispensary and was miraculously saved. The other is Pavel Rusanov, a responsible worker, a professional informer who imprisoned many innocent people and built his well-being on their suffering. Remembering those whose destinies he unjustly ordered, he does not feel remorse, in his soul there is only fear of possible retribution.
The disputes between Kostoglotov and Rusanov, their struggle for survival, are going on at a time when the Stalinist machine is crumbling, and for one it is a ray of light, and for another it is the collapse of the world created bit by bit.
Literature plays a significant role in understanding what is happening. Kostoglotov thinks about Russian literature. It was no accident that a volume of Leo Tolstoy appeared in the ward. Writer Solzhenitsyn recalls humanism literature XIX century with his "main law" of Tolstoy - the love of man to man.
Between Rusanov and Kostoglotov is the "preacher of moral socialism" Shulubin. Early readers would have thought that he was expressing the dreams of the writer himself. But later AI Solzhenitsyn said: "Shulubin, who retreated all his life and bent his back, is completely opposite to the author and does not express from any side of the author."
Much closer to the author are the old people Nikolai Ivanovich and Elena Aleksandrovna Kadmins, who passed through the camp and gained experience and depth of life. It was they who had Oleg after, unexpectedly, under the influence of X-rays, a strange illness receded. Kostoglotov knows that after his recovery he will be exiled to Ush-Terek forever, but he seems to be learning anew to appreciate what is given to a person.
In the "Cancer Ward" the Gulag reality is almost invisible, it only slightly reveals itself somewhere in the distance, reminds of itself by the "eternal exile" of Kostoglotov. The writer paints the everyday life of the cancer building with calm, restrained colors. Here is depicted a life shackled not barbed wire, but by nature itself. The threat of death hangs over a person no longer from the state, but from within human body ripening tumor. AI Solzhenitsyn seems to greet all living things, removing the cobweb from what fills human existence, warms it. The writer considers the theme of love of life from the other side. The self-satisfied vitality of Maxim Chaly is as blind and cynical as the attitude towards the life of Pavel Rusanov. These people are not stopped by spiritual values, they are able to crush everything in their path. The idea of repentance is alien to them, one of the cherished for A.I. Solzhenitsyn, conscience is asleep or lacking in them, therefore their path to people, to truth, to good is difficult. This is partly an answer to the question posed by Oleg Kostoglotov: “What is the upper price of life? How much can you pay for it, and how much can you not? " For Oleg hospital ward became a school. His craving for a simple life is understandable. In the finale, Oleg, after doubts and hesitation, nevertheless refuses a date with Vera Gangart, which could become decisive in their difficult relationship.
He is afraid to bring discord into the already broken fate of Vera and understands that they are separated by his illness, his position as an exile. The scene is expressive when, before leaving, Oleg enters the zoo at the request of Demka, a sick boy neighbor, where the experience makes him see the prototype of an exhausted society. This scene is like a moan, like a scream. “The most confusing thing in the imprisonment of the animals was that, having taken their side and, for example, having the strength, Oleg could not start breaking into the cages and freeing them. Because they lost, together with their homeland, the idea of freedom. And from their sudden release it could only become worse. "
Oleg Kostoglotov, former convict, independently came to the denial of the postulates of the official ideology. Shulubin, a Russian intellectual, a participant in the October Revolution, surrendered, outwardly accepting public morality, and doomed himself to a quarter of a century of mental anguish. Rusanov appears as the "world leader" of the nomenklatura regime. But, always following the line of the party, he often uses the power given to him for personal purposes, confusing them with public interests. The convictions of these heroes have already been fully formed and are repeatedly tested in the course of discussions. The rest of the heroes are mostly representatives of the passive majority who have adopted the official morality, but they are either indifferent to it, or defend it not so zealously. The entire work is a kind of dialogue of consciousness, reflecting almost the entire spectrum of life ideas characteristic of the era. The external well-being of the system does not mean that it is devoid of internal contradictions. It is in this dialogue that the author sees the potential for curing the cancer that has affected the entire society.
Born from the same era, the heroes of the story make different life choices. True, not all of them realize that the choice has already been made. Efrem Podduev, who lived his life the way he wanted, suddenly realizes, turning to Tolstoy's books, the entire emptiness of his existence. But this epiphany of the hero is too late. In essence, the problem of choice arises before each person every second, but of the many solutions, only one is correct, of all the paths of life, only one is for the heart. Demka, a teenager at a crossroads in life, realizes the need for choice. At school, he absorbed the official ideology, but in the ward, he felt its ambiguity, having heard the very contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive statements of his neighbors. The clash of positions of different heroes occurs in endless disputes affecting both everyday and everyday problems. Kostoglotov is a fighter, he is tireless, he literally pounces on his opponents, expressing everything that has grieved over the years of forced silence. Oleg easily parries any objections, since his arguments are suffered by him, and the thoughts of his opponents are most often inspired by the dominant ideology. Oleg does not accept even a timid attempt at a compromise on the part of Rusanov. And Pavel Nikolaevich and his associates are unable to argue with Kostoglotov, because they are not ready to defend their beliefs themselves. The state has always done this for them.
Rusanov lacks arguments: he is used to realizing his own righteousness, relying on the support of the system and personal power, and here everyone is equal in the face of the inevitable and near death and in front of each other. Kostoglotov's advantage in these disputes is also determined by the fact that he speaks from the position of a living person, and Rusanov defends the point of view of a soulless system. Shulubin only occasionally expresses his thoughts, defending the ideas of "moral socialism". It is to the question of the morality of the existing system that in the end all disputes in the chamber are drawn. From a conversation between Shulubin and Vadim Zatsyrko, a talented young scientist, we learn that, according to Vadim, science is responsible only for creating material wealth, and moral aspect the scientist should not worry.
The conversation between Demka and Asya reveals the essence of the education system: from childhood, students are taught to think and act “like everyone else”. The state, with the help of the school, teaches insincerity, instills in schoolchildren distorted ideas about morality and ethics. In the mouth of Avietta, the daughter of Rusanov, an aspiring poetess, the author puts official submissions on the tasks of literature: literature must embody the image of a "happy tomorrow" in which all hopes are realized today... Talent and writing skills, naturally, cannot be compared with the ideological demand. The main thing for the writer is the absence of "ideological dislocations", therefore literature becomes a craft serving the primitive tastes of the masses. The ideology of the system does not imply the creation moral values, for which Shulubin yearns, who betrayed his beliefs, but did not lose faith in them. He understands that the off-scale system life values not viable. Rusanov's stubborn self-confidence, Shulubin's deep doubts, Kostoglotov's intransigence - different levels of personality development under totalitarianism. All these life positions are dictated by the conditions of the system, which thus not only forms an iron support for itself from people, but also creates conditions for potential self-destruction.
All three heroes are victims of the system, since it deprived Rusanov of the ability to think independently, forced Shulubin to renounce his beliefs, and took away freedom from Kostoglotov. Any system that oppresses a person disfigures the souls of all its subjects, even those who serve him faithfully. 3. Thus, the fate of a person, according to Solzhenitsyn, depends on the choice that the person himself makes. Totalitarianism exists not only thanks to tyrants, but also thanks to the passive and indifferent to the whole majority, the “crowd”. Only choice true values can lead to victory over this monstrous totalitarian system. And everyone has the opportunity for such a choice.
1
Cancer Corps wore number thirteen. Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov was never and could not be superstitious, but something sank in him when they wrote to him in the direction: "the thirteenth building." It was too clever to name any prosthetic or intestinal one as thirteenth.
However, in the whole republic nowhere could they help him except this clinic.
“But I don’t have cancer, doctor?” I don't have cancer, is it? - Pavel Nikolaevich asked hopefully, lightly touching his evil tumor on the right side of his neck, growing almost every day, but outside it was still covered with harmless white skin.
“No, no, no, of course,” Doctor Dontsova reassured him for the tenth time, scribbling pages in the history of the disease in a sweeping handwriting. When she wrote, she put on her glasses - rounded rectangular; as soon as she stopped writing, she took them off. She was no longer young, and she looked pale, very tired.
It was still at the outpatient appointment, a few days ago. Even for outpatient appointments, the patients did not sleep at night. And Pavel Nikolayevich Dontsova determined to lie down, and as quickly as possible.
Not only the disease itself, unforeseen, unprepared, like a flurry in two weeks on the happy person- but no less illness now oppressed Pavel Nikolaevich that he had to go to this clinic on a general basis, how he was treated no longer remembered when. They began to call - Evgeny Semyonovich, and Shendyapin, and Ulmasbaev, and they, in turn, called, found out the possibilities, and whether there was a special ward in this clinic, or it was impossible at least temporarily to organize a small room as a special ward. But because of the local tightness, nothing came of it.
And the only thing that we managed to agree on through the chief doctor was that it would be possible to bypass the emergency room, the general bath and the changing room.
And in their blue "Muscovite" Yura drove his father and mother to the very steps of the Thirteenth Building.
Despite the frost, two women in washed out bumazy robes stood on the open stone porch - shivering, but stood.
Beginning with these unkempt dressing gowns, everything here was unpleasant for Pavel Nikolaevich: the cement floor of the porch, too worn out by his feet; dull door handles, seized by the hands of patients; the waiting hall with peeling paint floor, high olive paneling of walls (olive color seemed to be dirty) and large rack benches, on which patients who arrived from afar could not fit and sat on the floor - Uzbeks in quilted wadded robes, old Uzbeks in white headscarves, and young - in purple, red-green, and all in boots and galoshes. One Russian guy was lying, occupying a whole bench, in an unbuttoned coat hung down to the floor, exhausted himself, but with a swollen stomach, and was constantly screaming in pain. And these screams deafened Pavel Nikolaevich and hurt him so much as if the guy was shouting not about himself, but about him.
Pavel Nikolaevich turned pale to the lips, stopped and whispered:
- Mouth guard! I'm going to die here.
Do not. Let's go back.
Kapitolina Matveyevna took his hand firmly and squeezed:
- Pashenka! Where are we going to return? .. And what next?
- Well, maybe it will somehow get settled with Moscow ...
Kapitolina Matveyevna turned to her husband with her whole broad head, still broadened by lush copper bobbed curls:
- Pashenka! Moscow - it may be two more weeks, it may not be possible. How can you wait? After all, every morning it is bigger!
His wife squeezed him tightly against her wrist, conveying cheerfulness. In civil and official matters, Pavel Nikolayevich was unswerving himself, - all the more pleasant and calm it was for him to always rely on his wife in family matters: she decided everything important quickly and correctly.
And the guy on the bench was torn and shouting!
- Maybe the doctors will agree to go home ... We will pay ... - Pavel Nikolaevich hesitantly denied it.
- Pasik! - the wife suggested, suffering along with her husband, - you know, I myself am always the first for this: call a person and pay. But we found out: these doctors do not go, they do not take money. And they have the equipment. It is forbidden…
Pavel Nikolayevich himself understood that it was impossible. He said this just in case.
By agreement with the head physician of the oncological dispensary, the elder sister was to wait for them at two o'clock in the afternoon right here, at the bottom of the stairs, along which the patient was now cautiously descending on crutches. But, of course, the elder sister was not there, and her closet under the stairs was locked.
- You can't come to an agreement with anyone! - Kapitolina Matveevna burst out. - For which they only get paid!
As she was, embraced on the shoulders by two silver foxes, Kapitolina Matveyevna walked down the corridor, where it was written: "No entrance in outerwear."
Pavel Nikolaevich remained standing in the lobby. Fearfully, with a slight tilt of his head to the right, he felt his swelling between the collarbone and jaw. It had the impression that in half an hour - since he was at home in last time I looked at her in the mirror, enveloping the muffler, - for these half an hour she seemed to have grown. Pavel Nikolaevich felt weak and would like to sit down. But the benches seemed dirty, and I still had to ask some woman in a handkerchief with a greasy sack on the floor between her legs to move. Even from a distance, the stinking smell from this bag did not reach Pavel Nikolaevich.
And when will our population learn to ride with clean, neat suitcases! (However, now, with a tumor, it was all the same.)
Suffering from the screams of that guy and from everything that his eyes saw, and from everything that entered through his nose, Rusanov stood, leaning slightly against the ledge of the wall. A man entered outside, carrying in front of him a half-liter jar with a sticker, almost full of yellow liquid. He carried the can, not hiding, but proudly lifting it, like a mug of beer, standing in line. In front of Pavel Nikolayevich, almost handing him this can, the peasant stopped, wanted to ask, but looked at the fur seal cap and turned away, looking further, to the patient on crutches:
- Sweetheart! Where is it, eh?
The legless showed him to the laboratory door.
Pavel Nikolaevich was simply nauseous.
The outer door opened again, and a sister, not pretty, too long-faced, came in in one white dressing gown. She immediately noticed Pavel Nikolaevich, and guessed, and went up to him.
“Excuse me,” she said through a flap, rosy to the color of painted lips, in such a hurry. - Please forgive me! Have you been waiting for me for a long time? The medicines were brought there, I am taking them.
Pavel Nikolaevich wanted to answer caustically, but restrained himself. He was glad that the wait was over. He came up, carrying a suitcase and a bag of groceries, Yura - in one suit, without a hat, as he was driving a car - very calm, with a swaying high light forelock.
- Let's go! - the older sister was leading to her closet under the stairs. - I know, Nizamutdin Bakhramovich told me, you will be in your underwear and brought your pajamas, just not worn yet, right?
- From the store.
- This is a must, otherwise disinfection is needed, do you understand? This is where you change.
She opened the plywood door and turned on the light. There was no window in the sloped closet, and there were many graphs in colored pencils.
Yura silently brought his suitcase there, went out, and Pavel Nikolaevich went in to change. The older sister rushed to go somewhere else during this time, but then Kapitolina Matveyevna came up:
- Girl, are you in such a hurry?
- Yes n-a little ...
- What is your name?
- What a strange name. Are you not Russian?
- German ...
- You made us wait.
- Please forgive me. I am now taking it there ...
- So listen, Mita, I want you to know. My husband is ... a distinguished person, a very valuable worker. His name is Pavel Nikolaevich.
- Pavel Nikolaevich, well, I will remember.
- You see, he is generally used to leaving, and now he has such a serious illness. Could it be possible to arrange a watch of a permanent sister near him?
Mita's worried, restless face was still worried. She shook her head.
- In addition to operating rooms, we have three nurses on duty for sixty people during the day. And at night two.
- Well, you see! You will die here, screaming - they will not fit.
- Why do you think so? They approach everyone.
To “all”! .. If she said “to all,” then what to explain to her?
- Besides, are your sisters changing?
- Yes, twelve hours.
- This impersonal treatment is terrible! .. I myself would sit in shifts with my daughter! I would invite a permanent nurse at my own expense, - they say to me - and this is impossible ...?
- I think it's impossible. Nobody has done this before. Yes, there is nowhere to put a chair in the ward.
- My God, I imagine what this chamber is! I also need to see this chamber! How many beds are there?
- Nine. Yes, it's good that you go straight to the ward. We have new ones lying on the stairs, in the corridors.
- Girl, I will still ask, you know your people, it is easier for you to organize. Make an agreement with your sister or a nurse so that Pavel Nikolaevich has no official attention ... - she has already unlocked a large black reticule and pulled out three fifties.
Nearby, the silent son turned away.
Mita put both hands behind her back.
- No no! Such orders ...
- But I'm not giving you! - Kapitolina Matveyevna thrust the spread pieces of paper into her chest. - But since you can't do it legally ... I'm paying for the job! And I only ask you to convey the courtesy!
- No, no, - the sister grew cold. - We don't do that.
With the creak of the door, Pavel Nikolaevich came out of the closet in brand new green-brown pajamas and warm slippers with fur trim. On his nearly hairless head was a brand new crimson skullcap. Now, without a winter collar and a muffler, his swelling in a fist on the side of his neck looked especially menacing. He no longer kept his head straight, but slightly to one side.
The son went to collect everything removed in a suitcase. Hiding the money in her reticule, the wife looked anxiously at her husband:
- Will you freeze? .. You should have taken a warm robe. I'll bring it. Yes, here's a scarf. ”She took it out of his pocket. - Wrap it so as not to catch a cold! - In silver foxes and in a fur coat, she seemed three times more powerful than her husband. - Now go to the ward, get settled. Lay out the food, look around, think over what you need, I will sit and wait. You go down, you say - I'll bring everything by evening.
She did not lose her head, she always provided for everything. She was a real life companion. Pavel Nikolaevich looked at her with gratitude and suffering, then at his son.
- So, you are going, Yura?
- In the evening train, dad, - Yura approached. He behaved respectfully with his father, but, as always, he did not have any impulse, now there was an impulse of separation from his father, who was left in the hospital. He perceived everything extinguished.
- So, son. So this is the first serious business trip. Take the right tone right away. No complacency! Compliance is ruining you! Always remember that you are not Yura Rusanov, you are not a private person, you are a representative of the law, do you understand?
Whether Yura understood or not, it was difficult for Pavel Nikolaevich now to find more precise words. Mita hesitated and was eager to go.
- So I'll wait with my mother, - Yura smiled. - Don't say goodbye, go bye, dad.
- Will you come by yourself? - asked Mita.
“My God, the man is barely standing, can’t you bring him to bed?” Bring the bag!
Pavel Nikolaevich looked lonely at his own people, rejected Mita's supporting hand and, firmly grasping the railing, began to ascend. His heart was beating, and not yet from the rise at all. He ascended the steps, as people ascend on this one, on how his ... well, like a tribune, to give his head up there.
The older sister ran up ahead with his bag, there she shouted something to Maria and, even before Pavel Nikolaevich passed the first march, she was already running down the stairs on the other side and out of the building, showing Kapitolina Matveyevna what kind of sensitivity awaits her husband.
And Pavel Nikolaevich slowly climbed staircase- wide and deep, which can only be found in old buildings. On this middle platform, without interfering with the movement, there were two beds with patients and also bedside tables with them. One patient was ill, exhausted and sucked on an oxygen bag.
Trying not to look at his hopeless face, Rusanov turned and walked higher, looking up. But even at the end of the second march, he was not encouraged. Sister Maria was standing there. Her swarthy icon-painting face radiated neither a smile nor a greeting. Tall, thin and flat, she waited for him like a soldier, and immediately went to the upper vestibule, showing him where. There were several doors from here, and, only without blocking them, there were still beds with patients. In a windowless corner, under a constantly burning table lamp, stood my sister's writing table, her own treatment table, and next to it hung a wall cabinet with frosted glass and a red cross. Past these tables, still past the bed, and Maria pointed with a long, dry hand:
- The second from the window.
And already she was in a hurry to leave - an unpleasant feature of a general hospital, she would not stand up, would not talk.
The doors to the ward were constantly open, and yet, crossing the threshold, Pavel Nikolaevich felt a damp-stale mixed, partly medicinal smell - painful with his sensitivity to smells.
The bunks stood closely across the walls, with narrow aisles the width of the bedside tables, and the middle aisle along the room was also two to miss.
In this aisle stood a stocky, broad-shouldered patient in pink-striped pajamas. Thick and tight bandages were wrapped around his entire neck - high, almost under the lobes of his ears. The white gripping ring of bandages did not leave him freedom to move his heavy, blunt head, brown overgrown.
This patient spoke hoarsely to others who listened from the beds. At the entrance of Rusanov, he turned his whole body to him, with which his head was tightly merged, looked without participation and said:
- And here is another crustacean.
Pavel Nikolaevich did not consider it necessary to answer this familiarity. He felt that the whole room was now looking at him, but he did not want to look back at these random people and even greet them. He only moved his hand in the air with a pushing movement, indicating the brown patient to step aside. The latter let Pavel Nikolayevich pass and again, in the same way, with his entire body riveted on, turned after him.
- Hey, brother, you have cancer - what? He asked in an unclean voice.
Pavel Nikolaevich, who had already reached his bunk, was scrabbled by this question. He raised his eyes to the impudent man, trying not to lose his temper (but still his shoulders twitched), and said with dignity:
- Neither what... I don't have cancer at all.
Brown drowned out and awarded the whole room:
- What a fool! If not for cancer - would they put it here?
2
On that very first evening in the ward, within a few hours, Pavel Nikolaevich felt terrified.
A hard lump of tumor - unexpected, unnecessary, meaningless, useless to anyone - dragged it here like a hook drags a fish, and threw it on this iron bunk - narrow, pitiful, with a creaking net, with a meager mattress. One had only to change clothes under the stairs, say goodbye to relatives and go up to this ward - as the whole previous life slammed shut, and here it kicked out such a nasty one that it became even more terrible from it than from the tumor itself. It was no longer possible to choose a pleasant, soothing, what to look at, but it was necessary to look at eight downtrodden creatures, now, as it were, equal to him - eight patients in white-pink pajamas that were already very faded and worn, where patched, where torn, almost everyone not to measure. And there was no longer a choice of what to listen to, but it was necessary to listen to the boring conversations of these rabble people, which did not at all concern Pavel Nikolaevich and were not interesting to him. He would willingly order them to shut up, and especially this annoying brown-haired man with a bandage around his neck and a pinched head - everyone just called him Ephraim, although he was not young.
But Ephraim did not pacify in any way, did not go to bed and did not leave the room anywhere, but restlessly paced the middle aisle along the room. Sometimes he grimaced, his face twisted as if from a prick, and he grabbed his head. Then he went again. And, walking around like this, he stopped exactly at Rusanov's bed, leaned over to him over the back with his entire rigid upper half, exposed a wide freckled frown face and suggested:
- Now that's it, professor. You won't go home, okay?
It was very warm in the ward, Pavel Nikolaevich was lying on top of the blanket in his pajamas and skullcap. He adjusted his glasses with a gilded rim, looked at Ephraim as sternly as he knew how to look, and replied:
- I don't understand, comrade, what do you want from me? And why are you intimidating me? I don’t ask you any questions.
Ephraim only snorted angrily:
- Yes, do not ask, but you will not return home. You can return the glasses. The pajamas are new.
Having said such rudeness, he straightened his clumsy torso and again walked down the aisle, not easy carrying him.
Pavel Nikolaevich could, of course, cut him off and put him in his place, but for this he did not find the usual will in himself: it fell and from the words of the wrapped devil still fell. They needed support, and they pushed him into the pit. In a few hours Rusanov lost all his position, merits, plans for the future - and became seven tens of kilograms of a warm white body, who does not know his tomorrow.
Probably, melancholy was reflected on his face, because in one of the following passages, Ephraim, standing opposite, said already peacefully:
- If you get home - not for long, a-apyat here. Cancer loves people. Whoever the cancer will grab with its claw is to death.
Pavel Nikolaevich did not have the strength to object - and Ephraim again took up walking. And who was in the room to besiege him! - all lay some kind of nailed or non-Russian. Along the wall, where because of the stove ledge there were only four bunks, one bunk - directly opposite Rusanovskaya, legs to feet across the aisle - was Efremova, and the other three were completely young: a rustic, dark-skinned lad by the stove, a young Uzbek with a crutch , and by the window - skinny as a worm, and crumpled on his bunk, yellowed, groaning guy. In the same row where Pavel Nikolayevich was, two national men were lying to the left, then a Russian kid, tall, with a haircut for a typewriter, was sitting at the door reading, and on the other hand, on the last bunk next to the window, he was also sitting like a Russian, but you will not be happy with such a neighborhood: his face was a gangster. So he looked, probably, from a scar (a scar began near the corner of the mouth and passed along the lower left cheek almost to the neck); or maybe from uncombed, rearing black hair, sticking up and to the side; or maybe even from a rough, harsh expression. This bandyuga was drawn to the same place, to culture - he was finishing the book.
The light was already on - two bright lamps from the ceiling. It got dark outside the windows. We were waiting for supper.
- There is one old man here, - Ephraim did not calm down, - he lies downstairs, he will have an operation tomorrow. So, back in the forty-second year, a small crustacean was cut out and told - nothing, go for a walk. Understood? - Ephraim spoke as if briskly, and his voice was such as they would cut himself. - Thirteen years have passed, he forgot about this dispensary, drank vodka, ruffled women - old musician, you will see. And now he has grown up like that! - Ephraim even smacked his lips with pleasure. - Straight from the table, but as if not to the morgue.
- Well, enough of these gloomy predictions! - Pavel Nikolaevich dismissed and turned away and did not recognize his voice: he sounded so unauthorized, so pitiful.
And everyone was silent. Still nudges were catching up with this emaciated, all-round guy at the window in that row. He was sitting - not sitting, lying - not lying, hunched over, tucking his knees up to his chest, and, not finding it any more comfortable, his head rolled over not to the pillow, but to the foot of the bed. He moaned softly, grimacing and twitching, expressing how painful he was.
Pavel Nikolayevich turned away from him, slipped his feet into his slippers and began senselessly inspecting his bedside table, opening and closing the door where his groceries were thickly stacked, then the top drawer where toiletries and an electric shaver lay.
And Ephraim kept walking with his hands folded in front of his chest, sometimes flinching from the injections and humming his own, like a chorus, like a dead man:
- So, our business is wild ... very wild ...
A light cotton sounded behind Pavel Nikolaevich's back. He turned there carefully, because every movement of his neck gave off pain, and saw that it was his neighbor, a half-bandit, slapped the crust of the book he had read and turned it over in his big rough hands. Obliquely along the dark blue binding, and the same along the spine, the writer's painting was embossed in gold and already faded. Whose painting this is, Pavel Nikolayevich could not make out, and he did not want to ask this type. He came up with a nickname for his neighbor - Ogloed. It fit very well.
The moron looked at the book with sullen eyes and announced shamelessly loudly throughout the room:
- If not for Dyomka this book was chosen in the closet, so it would be impossible to believe that it was not thrown to us.
- What - Dyomka? Which book? - said the boy from the door, reading his own.
- There is a ball all over the city - perhaps you won't find one like that on purpose. - The moron looked into the wide, blunt back of Ephraim's head (not cut for a long time, from the inconvenience of his hair clung to the bandage), then into his tense face. - Ephraim! Stop whining. Take this book and read it.
Ephraim stopped like a bull, looked dimly.
The moron-eater wiggled his scar.
“That’s why hurry up, because we’ll die soon.” On, on.
He already held out the book to Ephraim, but he did not step:
- Are you illiterate, or what? - Ogloed not really persuaded.
- I am even very literate. Where I need - I am very literate.
The moron fumbled for a pencil on the windowsill, opened the book from behind and, looking through, dotted here and there.
“Don't fight,” he muttered, “there are little stories here. Here are a few - try it. Yes, tired of the pain, you whine. Read it.
- And Ephraim is not fighting anything! He took the book and tossed it onto his bunk.
Treatment of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in oncology in Tashkent in 1954 was reflected in the novel "Cancer Ward".
The novel gained fame thanks to samizdat and foreign editions in Russian and in translations in Western publishing houses.
The novel was one of the reasons for awarding Solzhenitsyn Nobel Prize. « New world»Published the work only in 1990.
The storyline and the main characters of the work
The action takes place within the walls of the 13th oncological building of the city hospital at the Tashkent Medical Institute.
A terrible fate decides the fate of the main characters, sending some to die, others seem to be discharged from the hospital with improvement or transferred to other departments.
Before fate, everyone is equal, schoolboy Demka, a boy with an adult look, and Kostoglotov, a former prisoner at the front, and Pavel Rusanov, an employee, a professional personnel officer and an unspoken informer.
The main event in the book is the opposition of the heroes of the writer himself, deduced in the work under the name of Oleg Kostoglotov and the former informer Rusanov, both of them on the verge of death and both fighting for life at a time when the seemingly indestructible Stalinist machine is crumbling.
Vadim Zatsyrko standing on the threshold between life and death and in spite of everything, working on scientific work, the result of his whole life, although the month of a hospital bed no longer gives him confidence that he can die a hero who has accomplished a feat.
The lonely librarian Alexei Shubin, who despises his own silent life, but nevertheless defends socialist ideas of morality in a dispute with Kostoglotov and others, it would seem, completely simple people thinking about their lives and their own moral behavior. All of them are in constant dispute and are fighting with each other and with the disease, and with their own morality and soul.
The main thing in the book
The story is terrible, unusually poignant, the heroes literally balance on the verge of everyday life and their own despair. It doesn't matter when and where the action takes place, what is important is what is happening in the heads of hospital patients who are on the verge of death, what happens in the soul, how the body is tormented, and how to cope with all this. The author focuses on the feelings of the heroes, their fears of a state of doom, where hope for a miracle, for recovery, is barely glimmering. And what's next, and then that's all - the point, the reader himself thinks out the end of the fate of the heroes.
After reading this book, I want to destroy it, so as not to incur the misfortunes that prevail in the work on myself and my loved ones, and, perhaps, it is better not to touch on this too terrible book at all. In addition to all these experiences, there is a second bottom in the book, the work makes a sharp comparison of the doom of cancer patients with those who fell under investigation, victims. And a seemingly cured illness and suddenly found freedom can turn unexpected side to a person, both illness and arrest, together with the investigation, can return.
In addition to all this seemingly hopeless, painful moral experience, the book does not forget the theme of love, a man's love for a woman, a doctor for his hard work for his patients. The author to his heroes, so recognizable and so extraordinary. The story makes it clear life meaning, raises questions of good and evil, truth and falsehood. The book teaches the concept of the value of life, teaches to be responsible.
The novel was originally planned to be published in Novy Mir magazine in the mid-1960s. However, in those years, the book was never officially published in the Soviet Union. A little later, the novel began to be printed in samizdat and distributed throughout the USSR. In addition, the book was published in other countries in Russian and in translations. The novel became one of the greatest literary successes of A. Solzhenitsyn. The work becomes the basis for awarding the Nobel Prize to the author. In 1990, the novel was officially published in the Soviet Union in the Novy Mir magazine.
The action takes place in a hospital at the clinic of the Tashkent Medical Institute (TashMi). In the thirteenth ("cancer") corps, people gathered, stricken with one of the most terrible diseases, undefeated by humanity to the end. With no other occupation, patients spend their time in numerous debates about ideology, life and death. Each inhabitant of the gloomy corps has its own destiny and its own way out of this terrible place: some are discharged home to die, others are improved, and still others are transferred to other departments.
Characteristics of the characters
Oleg Kostoglotov
The main character Romana is a former front-line soldier. Kostoglotov (or as his comrades in misfortune call him - Ogloed) went to prison, and then was sentenced to eternal exile in Kazakhstan. Kostoglotov does not consider himself dying. He does not trust "scientific" medicine, preferring to it folk remedies... The ogloeater is 34 years old. Once he dreamed of becoming an officer and getting a higher education. However, none of his wishes came true. He was not accepted as an officer, and he will no longer enter the institute, since he considers himself too old to study. Kostoglotov likes the doctor Vera Gangart (Vega) and the nurse Zoya. The deafener is full of desire to live and take everything from life.
Informer Rusanov
Before getting to the hospital, a patient named Rusanov held a "responsible" position. He was an adherent of the Stalinist system and made more than one denunciation in his life. Rusanov, like Ogloed, does not intend to die. He dreams of a decent pension, which he earned with his hard "work". The former informer does not like the hospital in which he finds himself. A person like him, Rusanov believes, should undergo treatment in better conditions.
Demka is one of the youngest patients in the ward. The boy managed to go through a lot during his 16 years. His parents broke up because his mother "got sick". There was no one to bring up Dyomka. He became an orphan with living parents. The boy dreamed of getting on his own feet, getting a higher education. The only joy in Demka's life was football. But it was his favorite sport that took his health away from him. After hitting the leg with a ball, the boy developed cancer. The leg had to be amputated.
But even this could not break the orphan. Demka continues to dream about higher education... He perceives the loss of a leg as a blessing. After all, now he does not have to waste time on sports and dance floors. The state will pay the boy a life pension, which means that he will be able to study and become a writer. Demka met his first love, Asenka, in the hospital. But both Asenka and Dyomka understand that this feeling will not continue outside the walls of the "cancer" building. The girl's breasts were amputated, and life lost all meaning for her.
Efrem Podduvaev
Efrem worked as a builder. One day terrible disease already "let go" of him. Podduvaev is sure that this time everything will be okay. Shortly before his death, he read a book by Leo Tolstoy, which made him think about many things. Ephraim is discharged from the hospital. After a while, he was gone.
Vadim Zatsyrko
The thirst for life is also great in the geologist Vadim Zatsyrko. Vadim was always afraid of only one thing - inaction. And now he has been in the hospital for a month. Zatsyrko is 27 years old. He's too young to die. At first, the geologist tries to ignore death, continuing to work on a method for determining the presence of ores by radioactive waters... Then, self-confidence begins to gradually leave him.
Alexey Shulubin
Librarian Shulubin managed to tell a lot in his life. In 1917 he became a Bolshevik, then participated in civil war... He had no friends, his wife died. Shulubin had children, but they have long forgotten about his existence. Illness was the last step to loneliness for the librarian. Shulubin doesn't like talking. He is much more interested in listening.
Character prototypes
Some of the characters in the novel had prototypes. The prototype of the doctor Lyudmila Dontsova was Lydia Dunaeva, head of the radiation department. The author named the treating doctor Irina Meike in his novel Vera Gangart.
"Cancer" corps united great amount different people with dissimilar destinies. Perhaps they would never have met outside the walls of this hospital. But then something that united them appeared - a disease, from which it is not always possible to be cured even in the progressive XX century.
Cancer has made people equal of different ages having different social status... The disease behaves in the same way with both the high-ranking Rusanov and the former prisoner Ogloed. Cancer does not spare those who have already been offended by fate. Left without parental care, Dyomka loses his leg. Librarian Shulubin, forgotten by his loved ones, does not wait happy old age... Disease relieves society of the old and the weak, no one the right people... But why, then, does she take the young, the beautiful, full of life and plans for the future? Why should a young scientist-geologist leave this world before he reaches the age of thirty, without having time to give humanity what he wanted? Questions remain unanswered.
Only after finding themselves far from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the inhabitants of the "cancer" building finally got the opportunity to think about the meaning of life. All their lives, these people were striving for something: they dreamed of higher education, family happiness, about being able to create something. Some patients, such as Rusanov, were not too picky about the methods of achieving their goals. But the moment came when all the successes, achievements, sorrows and joys ceased to have any meaning. On the verge of death, the tinsel of being loses its luster. And only then a person realizes that life itself was the main thing in his life.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Cancer Corps
Part one
The Cancer Corps also wore number thirteen. Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov was never and could not be superstitious, but something sank in him when they wrote to him in the direction: "the thirteenth building." It was too clever to name any prosthetic or intestinal one as thirteenth.
However, in the whole republic nowhere could they help him except this clinic.
“But I don’t have cancer, doctor?” I don't have cancer, is it? - Pavel Nikolaevich asked hopefully, lightly touching his evil tumor on the right side of his neck, growing almost every day, but outside it was still covered with harmless white skin.
“No, no, no, of course,” Doctor Dontsova reassured him for the tenth time, scribbling pages in the history of the disease in a sweeping handwriting. When she wrote, she put on her glasses - rounded rectangular; as soon as she stopped writing, she took them off. She was no longer young, and she looked pale, very tired.
It was still at the outpatient appointment, a few days ago. Even for outpatient appointments, the patients did not sleep at night. And Pavel Nikolayevich Dontsova determined to lie down, and as quickly as possible.
Not only the illness itself, unforeseen, unprepared, which had fallen like a flurry in two weeks on an unhealthy, happy person - but no less illness now oppressed Pavel Nikolaevich that he had to go to this clinic on a general basis, he could not remember when he was treated. They began to call - Evgeny Semyonovich, and Shendyapin, and Ulmasbaev, and they, in turn, called, found out the possibilities, and whether there was a special ward in this clinic, or it was impossible at least temporarily to organize a small room as a special ward. But because of the local tightness, nothing came of it.
And the only thing that we managed to agree on through the chief doctor was that it would be possible to bypass the emergency room, the general bath and the changing room.
And in their blue "Muscovite" Yura drove his father and mother to the very steps of the Thirteenth Building.
Despite the frost, two women in washed out bumazy robes stood on the open stone porch - shivering, but stood.
Beginning with these unkempt dressing gowns, everything here was unpleasant for Pavel Nikolaevich: the cement floor of the porch, too worn out by his feet; dull door handles, seized by the hands of patients; the waiting hall with peeling paint floor, high olive paneling of walls (olive color seemed to be dirty) and large rack benches, on which patients who arrived from afar could not fit and sat on the floor - Uzbeks in quilted wadded robes, old Uzbeks in white headscarves, and young - in purple, red-green, and all in boots and galoshes. One Russian guy was lying, occupying a whole bench, in an unbuttoned coat hung down to the floor, exhausted himself, but with a swollen stomach, and was constantly screaming in pain. And these screams deafened Pavel Nikolaevich and hurt him so much as if the guy was shouting not about himself, but about him.
Pavel Nikolaevich turned pale to the lips, stopped and whispered:
- Mouth guard! I'm going to die here. Do not. Let's go back.
Kapitolina Matveyevna took his hand firmly and squeezed:
- Pashenka! Where are we going to return? .. And what next?
- Well, maybe it will somehow get settled with Moscow ...
Kapitolina Matveyevna turned to her husband with her whole broad head, still broadened by lush copper bobbed curls:
- Pashenka! Moscow - it may be two more weeks, it may not be possible. How can you wait? After all, every morning it is bigger!
His wife squeezed him tightly against her wrist, conveying cheerfulness. In civil and official matters, Pavel Nikolayevich was unswerving himself, - all the more pleasant and calm it was for him to always rely on his wife in family matters: she decided everything important quickly and correctly.
And the guy on the bench was torn and shouting!
- Maybe the doctors will agree to go home ... We will pay ... - Pavel Nikolaevich hesitantly denied it.
- Pasik! - the wife suggested, suffering along with her husband, - you know, I myself am always the first for this: call a person and pay. But we found out: these doctors do not go, they do not take money. And they have the equipment. It is forbidden…
Pavel Nikolayevich himself understood that it was impossible. He said this just in case.
By agreement with the head physician of the oncological dispensary, the elder sister was to wait for them at two o'clock in the afternoon right here, at the bottom of the stairs, along which the patient was now cautiously descending on crutches. But, of course, the elder sister was not there, and her closet under the stairs was locked.
- You can't come to an agreement with anyone! - Kapitolina Matveevna burst out. - For which they only get paid!
As she was, embraced on the shoulders by two silver foxes, Kapitolina Matveyevna walked down the corridor, where it was written: "No entrance in outerwear."
Pavel Nikolaevich remained standing in the lobby. Fearfully, with a slight tilt of his head to the right, he felt his swelling between the collarbone and jaw. One had the impression that in half an hour — since he had looked at her in the mirror for the last time at home, wrapping his muffler — in that half hour, she seemed to have grown. Pavel Nikolaevich felt weak and would like to sit down. But the benches seemed dirty, and I still had to ask some woman in a handkerchief with a greasy sack on the floor between her legs to move. Even from a distance, the stinking smell from this bag did not reach Pavel Nikolaevich.
And when will our population learn to ride with clean, neat suitcases! (However, now, with a tumor, it was all the same.)
Suffering from the screams of that guy and from everything that his eyes saw, and from everything that entered through his nose, Rusanov stood, leaning slightly against the ledge of the wall. A man entered outside, carrying in front of him a half-liter jar with a sticker, almost full of yellow liquid. He carried the can, not hiding, but proudly lifting it, like a mug of beer, standing in line. In front of Pavel Nikolayevich, almost handing him this can, the peasant stopped, wanted to ask, but looked at the fur seal cap and turned away, looking further, to the patient on crutches:
- Sweetheart! Where is it, eh?
The legless showed him to the laboratory door.
Pavel Nikolaevich was simply nauseous.
The outer door opened again, and a sister, not pretty, too long-faced, came in in one white dressing gown. She immediately noticed Pavel Nikolaevich, and guessed, and went up to him.
“Excuse me,” she said through a flap, rosy to the color of painted lips, in such a hurry. - Please forgive me! Have you been waiting for me for a long time? The medicines were brought there, I am taking them.
Pavel Nikolaevich wanted to answer caustically, but restrained himself. He was glad that the wait was over. He came up, carrying a suitcase and a bag of groceries, Yura - in one suit, without a hat, as he was driving a car - very calm, with a swaying high light forelock.
- Let's go! - the older sister was leading to her closet under the stairs. - I know, Nizamutdin Bakhramovich told me, you will be in your underwear and brought your pajamas, just not worn yet, right?
- From the store.
- This is a must, otherwise disinfection is needed, do you understand? This is where you change.
She opened the plywood door and turned on the light. There was no window in the sloped closet, and there were many graphs in colored pencils.
Yura silently brought his suitcase there, went out, and Pavel Nikolaevich went in to change. The older sister rushed to go somewhere else during this time, but then Kapitolina Matveyevna came up:
- Girl, are you in such a hurry?
- Yes n-a little ...
- What is your name?
- What a strange name. Are you not Russian?
- German ...
- You made us wait.
- Please forgive me. I am now taking it there ...
- So listen, Mita, I want you to know. My husband is ... a distinguished person, a very valuable worker. His name is Pavel Nikolaevich.
- Pavel Nikolaevich, well, I will remember.
- You see, he is generally used to leaving, and now he has such a serious illness. Could it be possible to arrange a watch of a permanent sister near him?