“Man is a creature who gets used to everything, and that, I think, is the best definition of him.”

The suffering and endurance of the prisoners is explicitly human, Alexander believes. Rather than being crushed by their oppressive situation, the prisoners adapt. This makes them all the more human in his eyes, even if they are dehumanized in the eyes of the rest of society. It also gestures toward how external conditions and norms can help to form behavior, speaking to The Experience of Dehumanization and Dignity in Prison.

“Without work, and without lawful, normal property, a man cannot live, he becomes depraved, he turns into a brute.”

Alexander believes that work and labor provide a sense of purpose and meaning. This belief becomes complicated by the nature of the prison camp, in which men are forced to labor under the threat of physical violence and without wages. Alexander thus regards the attempts of the men to pursue their own private occupations in the evenings as a mark of resilience and meaning-making, once more reflecting the experience of dehumanization and dignity in prison.

“It occurred to me once that if they wanted to crush, to annihilate a man totally […] they would only need to give the labor a character of complete, total uselessness and meaninglessness.”

In the prison camp, Alexander reconsiders his understanding of the relationship between work and life. Rather than giving people a sense of purpose, he realizes, this meaningless and pointless labor can, in fact, be another way in which the authorities punish and dehumanize the prisoners. The work which Alexander believed to be purposeful and humanizing becomes a weapon to be turned against the prisoners.

“Can the punishment of these two be felt in the same way? But, anyhow, why occupy oneself with insoluble problems? There’s the drum, it’s time for the barracks.”

As he muses on the insoluble problems of life, Alexander’s narration is interrupted by the sound of the drum. Prison life dictates the rhythm of his life, preventing him from reaching any conclusions because he cannot set the pace of his introspection. This is the nature of prison for a man like Alexander, as he feels the pain of his thoughts and his theorizing being deliberately limited. Prison thus ends up imposing mental constraints as well as physical ones.

“I am firmly convinced that there is still no need to fear prisoners.”

Alexander’s time in prison has made him reconsider the nature of criminality. When he was a free man, he did not need to think about the criminals who were sent to labor in exile. They were a distant problem to him, emblematic of a lower, criminal class of society. In prison, Alexander is struck by the nuance and humanity of these people. They are not all good—some are the exact sort of unrepentant criminal that he once dismissed—but the spectrum of humanity on show in the prison has convinced Alexander of the need to reconsider his assumptions. Prisoners, he now believes, should not be feared, but understood as people.

“I am at peace about Alei even now. Where is he now?”

Alexander has fond memories of Alei, but the memories of Alei that he shares are interrupted by a sudden rhetorical question. Alei has a profound influence on Alexander’s life, and he loved Alei enough to write about him in the memories, yet he has no idea what happened to Alei. This moment of fleeting longing, an interruption to the typical narrative, hints at what made Alexander into the withdrawn, asocial figure depicted in the Introduction, demonstrating how many of the significant relationships he formed in prison were broken by his freedom.

“The characteristic of these people is the annihilation of their own person always, everywhere, and before almost everyone, and in group activities to take not even a secondary but a tertiary role.”

Alexander’s close scrutiny of the poorest people in the prison camp shows his attempt to find humanity in everyone. Such people seem set on self-annihilation, but Alexander does not dismiss them as foolish or irrelevant. He strives to understand how they operate within the social strata of prison life; he treats them with the same respect and empathy as he treats everyone else. This radical empathy is one way in which Alexander confronts The Effects of Class Tensions in Russian Society.

“What was this hard labor? And how would it be for me to work for the first time in my life?”

As a member of the Russian nobility, Alexander has a very different experience of work and labor in comparison to his fellow inmates. To him, the labor of the prisoners is—at least initially—a novelty. That he must labor shows how the prison flattens the class differences in Russian society, yet the different expectations of work between the peasants and the noble prisoners illustrates how the traces of class differences are never completely gone. In prison, class tensions are simply expressed differently.

“Every man, whoever he may be and however humiliated, still requires, even if instinctively, even if unconsciously, respect for his human dignity.”

Alexander finds a commonality between prisoners from all social classes. While they may come from different social backgrounds, they share the same fundamental desire for “human dignity.” In finding commonalities such as this, Alexander shows how he is using empathy to rebuild his understanding of social class from a foundational level.

“The prisoner unconsciously felt that by observing the holiday he was as if in contact with the whole world, that he was therefore not entirely an outcast, a lost man, a cut-off slice, that things in prison were the same as among other people.”

Small gestures and rituals help the prisoners to reaffirm their humanity, speaking to the experience of dehumanization and dignity in prison. In spite of the brutal conditions of the prison camp, celebrating Christmas is one such act. By celebrating the religious holiday, the inmates feel as though they are part of a wider culture, religion, and society. They feel human because they are able to do as free people do. Their Christmas may be different, but it is still Christmas, which reminds the prisoners that they may be different, but they are still people.

“We’ve got actors, real actors, who are playing in gentlemen’s comedies.”

There is a sincere sense of pride among the prisoners regarding the theatrical performance. Their actors are “real actors,” and their performance is just as legitimate as any in the free world. The performances are a way the prisoners can feel like other people. They are eager to show off to people like Alexander that they retain their humanity in spite of their incarceration.

“But most entertaining of all for me were the spectators; here everybody was unbuttoned.”

While everyone is paying attention to the performance, Alexander is fixated on a different kind of theater. He studies the prisoners as they watch the show; the show allows them to drop their pretenses and attitudes, enjoying the show without having to worry about their situation or their reputation. In this moment, Alexander enjoys being able to study the authentic emotions of the prisoners, revealing to him the humanity they often keep hidden.

“I could never say no to the various attendants and servants who latched on to me and finally took complete possession of me, so that in reality they were my masters and I their servant.”

With humor, Alexander observes the effects of class tensions in Russian society. The “various attendants and servants” surround Alexander (171), and he feels unable to send them away; they have the power, rather than him. This makes Alexander feel as though the traditional dynamic between masters and servants is inverted by the prison system, making him beholden to the men who are determined to serve him, but it also shows how deeply ingrained the idea of nobility still is.

“All that was left on him was a wooden cross with an amulet and the fetters, through which it seemed he could now have drawn his withered leg.”

Alexander observes a dead body, laden with the symbols of the cross and the fetters. Even in death, the man is not yet free. The religion which gave him strength is seen next to the fetters which limited his freedom, a symbolic illustration of the relationship between incarceration and faith. The fact that the man was not even allowed to die unchained speaks to The Problem of Violence in Society, as the legitimate authorities often engage in their own forms of dehumanizing violence toward even the most vulnerable prisoners.

“He first works as an apprentice to another executioner, and, having learned from him, is kept in the prison for good, where he is held separately, in a separate room, and even manages his own household, but almost always goes around under convoy.”

Even among the already isolated, alienated prisoners, the executioner is considered separate. Alexander describes the social marginalization of the executioner as a way to illustrate the parallel social strata that exist in prison. The prisoners impose on the executioner a form of social exile which mirrors their own exile as punishment for the violence that he is appointed to enact upon them.

“Punish her, teach her, but then be kind to her. That what a wife’s for.”

The casual way in which the male prisoners discuss violence against women is a reminder to Alexander that he is still among criminals. Their comfort with violence and abuse also reminds Alexander that he has something in common with them despite their class differences, as Alexander was convicted of killing his own wife. This commonality gestures toward the problem of violence in society, with misogyny and domestic abuse normalized.

“Though it’s hard still, it’s your own will.”

The life of an escapee on the road, Alexander suggests, is the ideological antithesis to the life of a prisoner. Whereas the prisoners have had their freedom restricted, the wanderers have actively chosen a life of freedom. Neither freedom nor incarceration is easy, yet a life on the run is preferable because it is the consequence of a decision.

“Most of all they were flattered that here they were, just like free men, just like they really were buying a horse for themselves, out of their own pocket, and had every right to do so.”

The purchase of the horse is a significant moment for the prisoners because they are entrusted to make a decision. Their opinions are deemed worthy of consideration by the authorities, and the men relish their opportunity to spend money in a manner that they choose. Though the purchase is a rare event, it is welcomed because the prisoners feel just like free men, speaking to the experience of dehumanization and dignity in prison.

“We also think that if such a fact turns out to be possible, then the possibility itself adds another new and extremely striking feature to the description and full portrayal of the Dead House.”

The editorial intrusion of the unnamed narrator provides context for Alexander’s depiction of one of the prisoners. The man, the narrator says, was deemed innocent of the crime that Alexander believed that he had committed. Alexander treats the man with the same empathy and understanding as everyone else, showing how guilt or innocence do not color his depiction of a person’s humanity. The overturned conviction, however, also speaks to the problem of violence in society, as the prisoner endured 10 years of harsh treatment that he did not deserve.

“Our authorities were all somehow intensely fearful of the convicts.”

Initially, Alexander believes that the prisoners are sent to the labor camps because the authorities and society wish to make an example of them. Later, he becomes to believe that the authorities are actually scared of the prisoners. The prisoners represent the full reality of what the authorities are capable of inflicting upon others. They are sent into exile because they reflect back the inhumanity of the institutions, thus making the authorities fearful of seeing their true inhumane selves and the problem of violence in society.

“I understood that I would never be accepted as a comrade, even if I was a prisoner a thousand times over, even unto ages of ages, even in the special section.”

Alexander comes to terms with class as an insurmountable division, even among convicts. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot just wave away his social class. It remains significant because the prisoners invest it with significance. They may all be prisoners, he accepts, but not all prisoners are equal in their circumstances.

“But all his fascination went away as soon as he took off his uniform. In uniform he was a terror, a god. In a frock coat he suddenly became a complete nothing and smacked of the lackey.”

Once stripped of his uniform and the authority and power that it symbolized, the major is a meek figure. He dominated the lives of the prisoners and had the power to inflict great pain on them. Alexander, however, treats the audience to a parting glimpse of the disgraced major which is colored by empathy. Rather than criticize the major for the pain he caused, he pities the major as a victim of the same abusive systems that brutalize the prisoners. The major thus becomes a symbol of the problem of violence even in institutions meant to be legitimate.

“I remember that in all that time, despite having hundreds of fellow prisoners, I was in terrible solitude, and I finally came to love that solitude.”

During his time in prison, Alexander comes to love the same solitude that he once feared. His solitude teaches him to view humanity in a different way, ridding him of many of the biases and prejudices that once affected his understanding of society. He may be alone, but in his loneliness he develops a greater respect and love for others. This passage speaks to Alexander’s moral and spiritual regeneration in prison.