Synopsis
This book describes the gulag system from arrest to release, end to end, from the experience of different prisoners, mainly the author. It also describes the decay of society through their different stories.
Key Takeaways
Page 9 – A submissive sheep is a find for a wolf
The police were looking for weakness, people look for weakness. Predators look for prey.
Page 13 – He simply does not know what to shout. And then, last of all, there is the person whose heart is too full of emotion, whose eyes have seen too much, for that whole ocean to pour forth in a few disconnected cries.
If you do not express yourself at the time when incursions occur how will you express something when it really matters?
Page 63 – From the moment you go to prison you must put your cosy past behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself, “My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I am condemned to die and the sooner the better. From now on my body is useless to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.
Only spirit is important, Keep it pure. Keep it clean.
Page 68 – Just give the person and we’ll create the case
Governments have been cheating people for a long time. Its better to play then to be played.
Page 93 – If a wife has become a whore are we really still bound to her in fidelity? A Motherland that betrays its soldiers – is that really a motherland?
This is a real question. Catch 22. Who is the enemy? The opposing solider who is trying to kill you or the leader who will get you killed? What is loyalty to a country disloyal to its people.
Page 99 – What a discovery? What it means is: Go and die; we will go on living. And if you lose your legs, yet manage to return from captivity on crutches, we will convict you”
People will use you and dispose of you. Know the game so you don’t get played.
Page 157 – And keep as few things as possible so you don’t have to fear for them.
The less you have when you go in the less they can take from you. Also said, the less you desire the less you will suffer
Page 174 – Do you believe God? Of Course.
Faith persists even in the worst places.
Page 226 – Hunger rules every hungry human being unless he has himself consciously decided to die. Hunger forces to steal, to look at with envy. Hunger, which darkens the brain and refuses to allow it to be distracted by anything else at all
If you want food hunger will control you. Sex and lust takes over. Money and greed has you. What you want controls you. What you desire dictates you.
Page 227 – The diarrhoea takes out of a man both strength and all interest – in other people, in life, in himself
In jail or in any place where we vulnerable the smallest disease will destroy you.
Page 233 – And if you loved someone out in freedom and wanted to remain true to him? What profit is there in the fidelity of female corpse? “When you get back to freedom – who is going to need you?”
The attractive females in jail had a choice. A hard choice. The reality of some lives. Think of the people in the third world, in oppressed minorities. Hell of a choice to make.
Page 293 – And here’s why. The first and principal cause was the lack of conscientiousness of the prisoners, the negligence of those stupid slaves. Not only couldn’t you expect any socialist self sacrifice of them, but they didn’t even manifest simple capitalist diligence.
You can’t force good work out of people.
Page 304 – The proverb says “Freedom spoils and lack of Freedom teaches”
A good summary of the western world today. What appreciation do we have for our freedoms?
Pahe 319 – No camp can corrupt those who have a stable nucleus, who do not accept that pitiful ideology which holds that “human beings are created for happiness”
Read this carefully. We are not created for happiness. What are we created for? I dont know. And maybe this only applies to happiness. But the suffering of jail does give credit to the faith which talk of happiness in the next world and not this world.
Page 321-6 – Constant Fear, Secrecy and Mistrust, Servitude, Universal Ignorance, Squealing, Betrayal, Corruption, Living a Lie (self interest or giving in to fear), Cruelty and Slave Psychology
This is how the Soviet Union was corrupted. We have the same issues in our world today.
Page 382 – “You should have come and told me who you were, and I’d given you everything you wanted”
There are people brave enough to help you. Just be honest and straight with them.
Final Thoughts
This book is full of hard life lessons and how unfair life can be for those in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that people survived these experiences makes me think the meaning of life is to survive and go on. The other thing is the strength of those people who did not do anything wrong, how they survived with their soul intact.
Stranger in Sydney 