Cancer Ward | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Cancer Ward | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | Accurate depiction of the world of the cancer patient

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Cancer Ward

	Cancer Ward Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"A Real Live Place"

Those were the words that Dorothy used to describe Oz after waking up in the bosom of her family. The same intense feeling came over me while reading this book, a task that spanned several years, as I often put it aside for other things, always returning, drawn by the power of the author's prose in opening his world to us. The realness of Solzhenitsyn's worlds makes him perhaps the most accessible Russian novelist. As he described the village where Kostoglotov, the protagonist, lived, or in recounting how Ruasov, the villian/fellow victim ruined lives while justifying his actions, a vivid portrait fills the reader's imagination.
The human struggle to find hope and beauty in the most tragic of settings is what this novel evokes so well. Soviet medicine, cancer, a Zek fresh from the Gulag, and in a twilight turned dawn, Solzhenitsyn finds for his semi-autobiographical protagonist happiness, not only in winning victories against a malignant tumor, but in thoughts of perhaps one more summer to live, with nights sleeping under the stars, of three beech trees that stand like ancient guardians of an otherwise empty steppe horizon, a dog that shared his life there, and of a young nurse and spinster doctor, both of whom he hoped at times to love.
The picture one often got (accurately) of the Soviet Union was of greyness, gloom, uniform drabnes, and of a totalitarian police state. This book serves to remind the reader that, despite such circumstances, even desparately sick human being might still seek, and find, happiness in his own, private world. Along with that, Solzhenitsyn never lets us forget the utter corruption of the Soviet state, often in the person of Ruasov, an ailing bureaucrat who has managed to turn personnel management into an exquisite art form, as an instrument of psychological torture, slowly administered.
Of all Solzehenitsyn's works, this is my favorite. The people one encounters are vividly real, and the ending isn't what one would think (or hope), but is fitting, nonetheless.
-Lloyd A. Conway

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Accurate depiction of the world of the cancer patient

Having just finished reading it for the third time, I believe that Cancer Ward is a very fine novel, rich at many levels: in its depiction of Soviet provincial society in 1955, a poor society just emerging from Stalinism; in its portrayal of many separate characters (doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers) in that society, many of whose lives have been permanently damaged by the terror and the GULAG, but in different ways; and, as I know from personal experience, in its depiction of the isolated world of the cancer patient, from which the rest of society is seen dimly, as though through dirty glass. In spite of all medical progress, the basics of this world have not changed much in 50 years: the core treatments are still surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and the side effects both long and short term can still be brutal.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.

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Overwheliming

It's not as if the protagonist had only a disease to battle. He is also facing a culture, a souless state that seems to devour all who dwell within its guarded borders. What is fascinating is the world within a world within a world. First, there is the Soviet regime, then the Cancer Ward and finally the individuals within this ward - three concentric rings.

Solzhynetsin again provides the reader with an in-your-face portrayal of the Soviet state but his primary mission is the exploration of the humanity of people in distress. If there is one common theme it is universal hope - hope for freedom, hope for recovery, hope for the future.

Oleg stands out in all his suffering and good humor. His portrait, against a background of drab, cold, gray and utterly barren physical, emotional and spiritual landscapes, is a tour de force of sympathetic semi-autobiographical writing. Who can forget the pitiful state of Soviet medicine against the care of the nurses and doctors. Again, Solzhynetsin the storyteller and Solzhynetsin the seer unite in an unforgettable portrayal of Russia and Russians.

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An amazing book!

This book shares with the world the way life truly was in 1950's Communist Russia. The characters are amazingly real and the plot is simple yet very interesting. As a person who doesn't enjoy most novels I can say that this one held me to the very last page!

READ THIS BOOK!

Actually i have nothing to add about the book in general. The people before me describe it very well, i think. I just would like to say that i would read this book a second time just for the scene where all the patients are involved in a discussion regarding one of Tolstoy's stories, "what men live by". It's just wonderful, all these people with different backgrounds comment on the title of the story, none of them actually read it; they just argue on the title. I don't want to spoil the scene here, so read it yourselves, it's worth it.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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