The House of the Dead

The plot, a thinly veiled account of Fyodor Dostoevski's four years in a Siberian military prison, has little of the usual narrative structure. Instead, the author presents a series of scenes of prison life, disguised as the memoirs of Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a wellborn young man who has served ten years at hard labor for killing his wife. In a sketchy frame story, an anonymous first-person narrator extols the many attractions of Siberian life, particularly in the small town where he met Goryanchikov, who was earning his living as a French tutor. The townspeople think the ex-prisoner a "terrible misanthrope," perhaps even a crazy man. After Goryanchikov's death, the narrator buys what remains of Goryanchikov's papers from the tutor's landlady. Among them is a bulky notebook, chiefly filled by prison memoirs: These the narrator offers for public judgment.<br> The main narrative begins as Goryanchikov arrives at the prison and depicts the grim fortress, containing about 250 prisoners from various classes of society, sent there for all sorts of crimes, criminal and political. After describing the stench, noise, and other terrible conditions of his barracks, he concludes, "Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him." Goryanchikov briefly catalogs the kinds of prisoners sent there, paying particular attention to the Special Class--prisoners with indefinite sentences even more harsh than their fellows'. In sum, Goryanchikov thinks himself in Hell, "the nethermost pit and the outer darkness." The prisoners constantly fight, steal from one another--even Goryanchikov's Bible is quickly taken--and are subject to the sadistic whims of the prison's commandant, who has men flogged for the smallest offense. In this underworld, there is also underground activity: smuggling vodka, working to make money, even pawnbroking. Yet this first chapter ends on a curiously hopeful note: Goryanchikov recalls a small girl's giving him a kopeck, "in Christ's name."