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Meat

So I finished the First Circle. Again. It's maybe the 10th time I've read it... I always find it enjoyable and learn something new as well.

The winding up scene of the book has some prisoners being transported in a cargo van through Moscow. These boxes are painted to look like delivery trucks, the side of which is stenciled with the words (in a couple of languages) MEAT and BREAD. This was done to mask the transport vehicles as ordinary delivery trucks, as well as to give the impression that there is plenty of meat and bread to go around. In reality, the trucks were filled with prisoners in transport, being carted off to one branch of the GULAG or another to provide essentially slave labor in terrible conditions.

It seems to me that there's a symbol there. Knowing Mr. Solzhenitsyn as well as I do (read: not at all) I know he has a wry sense of humor that is subtle and clever. Yet this one is pretty obvious: human beings, their time, labor, talents, etc. are commodities like bread or meat. They are to be used and used up, then cast aside.

I hope that this is not the case.

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