Thou didst give us life, oh Lord, they say, and scarcely had we looked upon it when thou didst take it back again. ... Father Zosima is not interested with what happens in this life but the next. ... Ivan is adamant that harmony cannot be reached by suffering in life. It's not fair to him that some people have to experience pain in life. ... The stuffy workshop, the din of machinery, work all day long, the vile language and the drink, the drink-is what a little child's heart needs? ...

• Word Count: 2613
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

Published in 1985, Ivan Illich's H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness is the result of notes he took for a short lecture he gave in Dallas, as well as notes from a lecture given by his colleague Ruth Kriss-Rettenbeck. ... (p. 19) The discussion of human relationships with water is introduced through references to the Book of Genesis and Greek mythology. ... (p. 51) He explains that at one time people didn't bathe more then twice in a life time-once "once when they were a baby and once when they were dead. In contrast, today some of us bathe several times a day and still feel...

• Word Count: 1289
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

It is still pitch-black when Ivan Denisovich Shukhov gets up. ... No one escaped the brutality of the Stalinist era, and Solzhenitsyn's attempt to document a day in the life of one prisoner was accepted as a realistic rendering of many other days in the lives of many other people. Already, early on in the book, the characters have been reduced to numbers and parts of greater numbers: Ivan Denisovich is addressed by the number on his shirt-tag, and he identifies himself and the other prisoners by the numbers of their regiments. ... Life in the gulag has reduced all of the prisoners to th...

• Word Count: 1884
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School