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Book Report/Review example - Searching for Freedom and Power

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Book Report/Review
Pages 3 (753 words)
In the early 1900s within the socialist society of Soviet Union, prisoners were sent to prison camps called Gulags. Here, they were subject to forced labor and a kind of life so highly regimented prisoners were said to have lost their sense of self and even humanity…

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The author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, received the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 1970, for painting the world a clearer picture of the injustices done to the prisoners of the Stalinist regime. Solzhenitsyn wrote the novel in such a quiet disimpassioned way it was as if their day were as normal as the next-door neighbors'. Then again, is it really normal Is it human nature to walk in queues with eyes fixed on the ground following somebody else's every command Is it not rather human nature to seek freedom even in the smallest measure and even in an environment where it is systematically suppressed
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines freedom as having the power to determine without restraint or coercion. Desiring freedom then is tantamount to establishing some degree of power and control over oneself and others. As though to say that it is instinctive among human beings, the novel described many instances of the prisoners defying or cheating the authority. Committing small acts of disobedience was as much power as the prisoners got and they took their chances despite the consequences. For instance the prisoner, Buinovsky, when frisked, resisted saying that the guard was in violation of the criminal code. A former naval officer, he genuinely believed in communism but he thought too that it had to be guided by the law. A newcomer, he still had a certain expectation of control over his person. (Solzhenitsyn, 28) The
prisoners had in the first place been fris ...
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