A Day, in, The Life

The prisoners’ lives show how the Soviet regime makes private events public in order to exercise control over individuals. The inmates have no space to call their own, and their every move is monitored. At one point, the commander decrees that even a walk to the latrine cannot be made alone; even this has become a public event. The camp has replaced prisoners’ names, which represent their private identities, with letters and numbers. Prisoners are no longer private individuals, but rather symbols in a public system. The state’s elimination of privacy is not totally successful, however. The prisoners cling to their private worlds at all costs: Alyoshka latches on to his faith; Tsezar to his care packages; and Shukhov to his precious spoon. In an official and dehumanizing environment, each manages to keep one foot in his own private world, thereby preserving his humanity.
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Solzhenitsyn’s constant emphasis on the biting cold reminds us that Shukhov is not only a political prisoner but a prisoner of nature as well. No one ever considers trying to escape from the camp, for the obvious reason that the intense weather would cause a quick death. The combination of the hard camp life and the forbidding weather creates the sense that the whole universe is against Shukhov and his fellow inmates—their lives are hindered by both humans and nature. This sense of oppression highlights the anguish of the human condition. 

The world is inhospitable, and yet it is the fate of humans to carry on, one day at a time.