Joseph Taylor

Lit Essay 3

There are many kinds of prisons. There are physical prisons, those erected to trap the body,

but there are also mental ones, which ensnare the mind, impeding thought and individualism. The

depiction of imprisonment is commonplace in Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, which chronicles the horror,

despair and even degradation of the soul which such places breed. Another classic example of

imprisonment is Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading which shows the final days of a man

condemned to death. On the surface both of these authors are focusing on the physical nature of

imprisonment, but deeper reading, especially when taken in context with each other, reveals that

the true danger lies not within the impediment of the flesh, but of the chaining of the mind.

In Shalamov’s “An Individual Assignment” we see the tale of Dugaev a young man who has

the misfortune of being imprisoned in a work camp, like so many others. Though it is stated that

“Dugaev was twenty-three years old” the conditions of the camp have broken him down (pg 21). He

was steadily “’getting weaker’ . . . [and] was hungry all the time” (pg 22). This combined torment and

the mundanity of the prisons walls did more than sap the young man’s strength, it robbed him of his

will, the creative energy and individualism that should be apparent in a young person. The system in

place around Dugaev had eroded his will and energy to the point that he was “totally indifferent to

any change in his fate” (pg 22). This state of indifference, of mental fatigue, also leads to

compliance. Dugaev does not hesitate or question when his jailors give him a strange individual

assignment and it is so severe as to be to the point where Dugaev eats, not because he feels the

need to, but because it is what all those around him are doing. It is an obvious metaphor for blind

compliance with society.

This state of fatigued compliance and acceptance can also be seen in Invitation to a

Beheading. Cincinnatus, who seemed to almost delight in not doing as his jailors want, in refusing to

play their game, reaches a point where his defiance ceases. On the way up the scaffold, and during

his execution he does nothing to prevent his fate, playing his role in their little production. Like

Joseph Taylor

Dugaev the prison of his surroundings have apparently won out, putting him in numb state of

obedience, which is ultimately the goal of any successful prison. Cincinnatus’s case is perhaps the

more philosophical, as the physical prison in which he resides is not the prison that has broken him

down. For Cincinnatus, the hollow world that surrounded him was the prison with walls as seemingly

inescapable as the barbed fences that entrapped Dugaev.

In the case of both men, this obedience is leading them to their destruction. With

Cincinnatus this is quite obvious as the man is climbing on stage in order to be executed, but with

Dugaev the reader is unaware of what fate awaits him. In both cases the authors are hinting at the

dangers of such capitulation to conformity, which happens to be a prevalent theme in all of

Nabokov’s works. As dismal as the fate of these two men appears to be, both author’s again give us

a glimmer of hope. Neither man dies in the stupor of ignorance that ultimately led them to their

fate. In his final moments Dugaev “realized what was about to happen” and has the presence to

reflect on his actions in a way that no mental prison could allow. He manages to steal back just a

sliver of his old self in the end, which is more than most manage in his situation.

Nabokov, unfettered as Shalamov is by the limitations of reality, goes for a more dramatic

display. Not only does Cincinnatus find himself once more, shrugging off the cow-like stupor that the

prison of a world had so carefully induced in him, but this realization actively dismantles the system

that was trapping him. As Cincinnatus’s individual poetic spirit rallies, the false world around him

buckles, revealing that in the end, it was all a careful fabrication designed to destroy his

individualism and willpower and replace it with that horrid conformity that had erected it in the first

place. His jailors grow small, their power destroyed alongside the prison they had erected for him,

and flee. Cincinnatus is then free to move on, the last of the mental shackles finally removed. This is

perhaps the more artistic way of looking at it. In actuality, it is likely that Cincinnatus also meets his

end after his moment of mental resurgence. It does not change the moral in the slightest, however.

Joseph Taylor

Both Nabokov and Shalamov were painfully aware of imprisonment, Shalamov having been

physically imprisoned, and Nabokov having observed the mental imprisonment that gripped first

Russia and then German on the onset of the Soviet and Nazi regimes. Through their tales we see the

danger of flirting with such conformity, in allowing oneself to be mentally shackled. We are able to

see that there are far worse fates than being physically imprisoned, and even death.