Kolyma stories, in abbreviation. Brief retelling - Kolyma stories Shalamov kindergarten summary
Reads in 10-15 minutes
original - 4-5 hours
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their tragic destinies similar to one another, in which chance, merciless or merciful, helper or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves dominate. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention.
For the show
Camp corruption, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and took place in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is played down and asks to play for a "representation", that is, in debt. At some point, irritated by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves "finishes" him, and the sweater still goes to the thieves.
Single metering
Camp labor, unequivocally defined by Shalamov as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. A goner-prisoner is not able to give a percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand the sixteen-hour working day. He drives, turns, pours, again drives and again turns, and in the evening the caretaker comes and measures Dugaev's work with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems to Dugaev to be very large, his calves are aching, his hands, shoulders, head are unbearably sore, he even lost his sense of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. A day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the chirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he regrets only that the last day was in vain.
Shock therapy
Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself at common work, feels that he is gradually losing. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by the escorts, they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed, and the rib grew together, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for research. He has a chance to be activated, that is, written off due to illness at will. Remembering the mine, aching cold, a bowl of empty soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be convicted of deceit and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a prisoner in the past, was not a blunder. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing the fakers. This amuses his vanity: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite the year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a simulator and looks forward to the theatrical effect of a new exposure. First, the doctor gives him roush anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov's body can be straightened, and a week later, the procedure of the so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After it, the prisoner himself asks for an extract.
Major Pugachev's last fight
Among the heroes of Shalamov's prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, to stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941-1945. prisoners who fought and passed German captivity began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temper, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and scouts...”. But most importantly, they possessed the instinct of freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their strength and will. Their “guilt” was that they were surrounded or captured. And it is clear to Major Pugachev, one of these people who have not yet been broken: “they were brought to their death - to change these living dead,” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then former major gathers equally determined and strong, to match, prisoners, ready to either die or become free. In their group - pilots, scout, paramedic, tanker. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. All winter they are preparing an escape. Pugachev realized that only those who bypassed the general work could survive the winter and then run away. And the participants in the conspiracy, one by one, advance into the service: someone becomes a cook, someone a cultist who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But spring is coming, and with it the day ahead.
At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The attendant lets in the camp cook-prisoner, who, as usual, has come for the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the duty officer is strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens with another, who returned a little later on duty. Then everything goes according to Pugachev's plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the guard on duty, take possession of the weapon. Keeping the suddenly awakened fighters at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Leaving the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue on their way in the car until the gas runs out. After that, they go to the taiga. At night - the first night at liberty after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, recalls his escape from the German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, accusation of espionage and sentence - twenty-five years in prison. He also recalls the visits to the German camp of the emissaries of General Vlasov, who recruited Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet authorities all of them, who were captured, are traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He lovingly looks over the sleeping comrades who believe in him and stretch out their hands to freedom, he knows that they are "the best, worthy of all." And a little later, a fight ensues, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and the soldiers surrounding them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in a bear's lair, that he will be found anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself.
Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich was born in Vologda in a priestly family. After graduating from school and enrolling at Moscow University, Shalamov actively writes poetry and works in literary circles. For participating in a rally against the leader of the peoples, he was sentenced to three years, after his release he was imprisoned several more times. In total, Shalamov spent seventeen years in prison, about which he creates his collection “ Kolyma stories”, which is an autobiographical episode of the author's experience behind barbed wire.
For the show
This story is about a card game played by two thieves. One of them loses and asks to play on credit, which was not mandatory, but Sevochka did not want to deprive the losing blatar of the last chance to win back, and he agrees. There is nothing to stake, but the player who has gone into a rage is no longer able to stop, he selects with his eyes one of the convicts who happened to be here by chance, and demands to take off his sweater. The prisoner who fell under the hot hand refuses. Immediately, one of Seva's sixes with an imperceptible movement throws a hand in his direction, and the prisoner falls dead to the side. The sweater goes into the use of the blatar.
At night
After a meager prison dinner, Glebov and Bagretsov went to a rock located behind a distant hill. It was a long walk, and they stopped to rest. Two friends, brought here at the same time on the same ship, went to dig up the corpse of a comrade, buried only this morning.
Throwing aside the stones that covered the dead body, they pull the dead man out of the pit and pull off his shirt. Assessing the quality of the underpants, the friends pull them off as well. Having removed things from the dead man, Glebov hides them under his quilted jacket. After burying the corpse in place, the friends go back. Their bright dreams are warmed by the anticipation of tomorrow, when they can exchange something edible, or even shag, for these.
Carpenters
There was a severe frost outside, from which saliva froze on the fly.
Potashnikov feels that his strength is running out, and if something does not happen, he will simply die. With all his exhausted body, Potashnikov passionately and hopelessly wishes to meet death in a hospital bed, where he will be given at least a little human attention. He is disgusted by death with the disregard of others, who look at the death of their own kind with complete indifference.
On this day, Potashnikov was fabulously lucky. Some visiting chief demanded from the brigadier people who knew how to carpentry. The foreman understood that with such an article as the convicts of his brigade, there could not be people with such a specialty, and he explained this to the visitor. Then the chief turned to the brigade. Potashnikov stepped forward, followed by another prisoner. Both followed the visitor to the place of their new work. On the way, they found out that neither of them had ever held a saw or an ax in their hands.
Having figured out their cunning for the right to survive, the carpenter treated them like a human being, giving the prisoners a couple of days of life. And two days later it was warm.
Single metering
After the end of the working day, the warden warns the prisoner that tomorrow he will work separately from the brigade. Dugaev was surprised only by the reaction of the foreman and his partner, who heard these words.
The next day the overseer showed the place of work, and the man dutifully began to dig. He was even glad that he was alone, and there was no one to push him. By evening, the young prisoner was exhausted to such an extent that he did not even feel hungry. Having made a measurement of the work done by a person, the caretaker said that a quarter of the norm had been done. For Dugaev, this was a huge figure, he was surprised at how much he did.
After work, the investigator called the convict, asked the usual questions, and Dugaev went to rest. The next day, he was digging and rocking with his brigade, and at night the soldiers took the prisoner to where they no longer come from. Finally realizing what was about to happen, Dugaev felt sorry that he had worked and suffered in vain that day.
Berries
A team of people who have worked in the forest descends to the barracks. Each has a log on his shoulder. One of the prisoners falls, for which one of the guards promises to kill him tomorrow. The next day, the prisoners continued to collect everything in the forest that could be used to heat the barracks. Rose hips, bushes of overripe lingonberries and blueberries come across on last year's withered grass.
One of the prisoners collects shriveled berries in a jar, after which he will exchange them for bread from the detachment cook. The day was drawing to a close, and the jar was not yet filled when the prisoners approached the forbidden lane. One of them offered to return, but the comrade had a great desire to get an extra piece of bread, and he stepped on restricted area, immediately receiving a bullet from the escort. The first prisoner picked up a jar that rolled to the side, he knew who he could get bread from.
The escort regretted that the first one had not crossed the line, so he wanted to send him to the next world.
sherry brandy
A man who was destined for a great future on the literary path is dying on the bunk, he was a talented poet of the twentieth century. He died painfully and for a long time. Various visions flashed through his head, dream and reality were confused. Coming to consciousness, the man believed that people needed his poetry, that it gave mankind an understanding of something new. Until now, poems were born in his head.
The day came when they gave him a ration of bread, which he could no longer chew, but simply procrastinated over his rotting teeth. Then the cellmates began to stop him, urging him to leave a piece for the next time. And then everything became clear to the poet. He died the same day, but the neighbors managed to use his dead body for two more days to get extra rations.
Condensed milk
The writer's cellmate in Butyrskaya prison, engineer Shestakov, worked not at the mine, but in the geological office. One day, he saw how lustfully he looked at the loaves of fresh bread in the grocery store. This allowed him to offer his friend to smoke first, and then go on the run. It immediately became clear to the narrator at what price Shestakov decided to pay for his dust-free position in the office. The prisoner was well aware that none of the convicts could overcome the long distance, but Shestakov promised him to bring condensed milk, and the man agreed.
All night the prisoner thought about the impossible escape, and about cans of canned milk. The whole working day was spent in anticipation of the evening, after waiting for the beep, the writer went to the engineer's barracks. Shestakov was already waiting for him on the porch, he had the promised jars in his pockets. Sitting at the table, the man opened the cans and drank the milk. He looked at Shestakov and said that he had changed his mind. The engineer understood.
The prisoner could not warn his cellmates, and two of them lost their lives a week later, and three received a new term. Shestakov was transferred to another mine.
Shock therapy
Merzlyakov worked at one of the mines. While a person could steal oats from horse feeders, he still somehow supported his body, but when he was transferred to general work, he realized that he could not endure it for a long time, and death frightened him, the person really wanted to live. He began to look for any way to get to the hospital, and when the convict was severely beaten, breaking a rib, he decided that this was his chance. Merzlyakov was lying in a bent state all the time, the hospital did not have the necessary equipment, and he managed to deceive doctors for a whole year.
In the end, the patient was sent to the central hospital, where they could take an x-ray and make a diagnosis. Served as a neuropathologist in the hospital former prisoner, having at one time the position of associate professor of one of the leading medical institutions. Not being able to help people in the wild, improving his skills, he honed his skills by exposing convicts feigning illness in order to somehow alleviate their plight. The fact that Merzlyakov was a malingerer became clear to Pyotr Ivanovich from the first minute, and the more he wanted to prove it in the presence of high authorities, and experience a sense of superiority.
First, the doctor unbends the bent body with the help of anesthesia, but when the patient continues to insist on his illness, Pyotr Ivanovich uses the method of shock therapy, and after a while the patient himself asks to leave the hospital.
Typhoid Quarantine
Years of work in the mines undermined Andreev's health, and he was sent to typhoid quarantine. With all his might, trying to survive, Andreev tried to stay in quarantine as long as possible, to postpone the day of returning to severe frosts and inhuman labor. Adapting and getting out, he was able to hold out for three months in typhoid barracks. Most of the inmates have already been sent out of quarantine for long-distance transfers. Only a dozen or three people remained, Andreev already thought that he had won, and he would be sent not to the mines, but to the next business trip, where he would spend the rest of his term. Doubts crept in when they were given winter clothes. And when the last close business trips remained in the distance, he realized that fate had outplayed him.
This does not end the cycle of stories of the great Russian writer V.T. All the hardships and sufferings experienced affected the writer’s health, he lost his sight, stopped hearing, almost could not move, but reading his stories, you understand how important the desire for life, to preserve human qualities in oneself.
Pride and dignity, honor and nobility should be an integral feature of a real person.
Picture or drawing Shalamov - Kolyma stories
Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary
- Summary Dostoevsky Netochka Nezvanova
Netochka is a girl who lives in a house in St. Petersburg, but she lives in the attic. She also has a mother who earns a living for her daughter and herself by sewing, and even by preparing food somehow. But Netochka even has a stepfather
- Summary Bulk Leo Tolstoy
Bulka is the name of the dog that the narrator loves so much. The dog is strong, but kind and never bites people. At the same time, Bulka loves hunting and can defeat many animals.
- Summary of Cynics Mariengof
Olga remains in Moscow in 1918, her parents emigrated and advised her to marry a Bolshevik in order to keep her apartment. Olga sells jewelry, suitors bring her flowers
- Summary While the car is waiting for O. Henry
O. Henry - English writer, master short story. In his works, the heroes are succinctly and briefly spoken about. And when you read them, you imagine with your own eyes the place where the events take place. And heroes.
- Summary of The Adventures of Emil from Lenneberg Lindgren
The book is in the form of a diary. The titles of the chapters contain the dates and days of the week when something happened to Emil.
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, helper or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves dominate. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention.
FUNERAL WORD
The author recalls by name his comrades in the camps. Calling to mind a mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
THE LIFE OF ENGINEER KIPREEVA
Having never betrayed or sold anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively protecting his existence: a person can only consider himself a person and survive if he is ready to commit suicide at any moment, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is not known what you will be like at a decisive moment, whether you just have enough physical strength, and not just mental. Arrested in 1938, the engineer-physicist Kipreev not only withstood the beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still try to get him to sign false testimony, intimidating him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man, and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
In the evening, winding up the tape measure, the caretaker said that Dugaev would receive a single measurement the next day. The brigadier, who was standing nearby and asking the caretaker to lend "a dozen cubes until the day after tomorrow," suddenly fell silent and began to look at the evening star twinkling behind the crest of the hill. Baranov, Dugaev's partner, who helped the caretaker measure the work done, took a shovel and began to clean up the long-cleaned face.
Dugaev was twenty-three years old, and everything he saw and heard here surprised him more than frightened him.
The brigade gathered for roll call, handed over the instrument, and returned to the barracks in the prisoner's uneven formation. The hard day was over. In the dining room, without sitting down, Dugaev drank a portion of thin cold cereal soup over the side of the bowl. Bread was given out in the morning for the whole day and was eaten long ago. I wanted to smoke. He looked around, wondering who to beg for a cigarette butt. On the windowsill, Baranov collected shag grains from an inside-out pouch into a piece of paper. Having carefully collected them, Baranov rolled up a thin cigarette and handed it to Dugaev.
“Kuri, leave it to me,” he suggested.
Dugaev was surprised - he and Baranov were not friendly. However, with hunger, cold and insomnia, no friendship is struck up, and Dugaev, despite his youth, understood the falsity of the saying about friendship, tested by misfortune and misfortune. In order for friendship to be friendship, it is necessary that its strong foundation be laid when conditions, life have not yet reached the last boundary, beyond which there is nothing human in a person, but only distrust, anger and lies. Dugaev well remembered the northern proverb, the three commandments of the prisoner: do not believe, do not be afraid and do not ask ...
Dugaev greedily sucked in the sweet tobacco smoke, and his head began to spin.
“Weakening,” he said. Baranov said nothing.
Dugaev returned to the barracks, lay down and closed his eyes. Lately he hadn't slept well, hunger didn't let him sleep well. Dreams were especially painful - loaves of bread, steaming fatty soups ... Forgetfulness did not come soon, but still, half an hour before getting up, Dugaev had already opened his eyes.
The team came to work. Everyone dispersed to their destinations.
“And you wait,” said the foreman to Dugaev. - The caretaker will put you in.
Dugaev sat down on the ground. He had already managed to get tired enough to treat with complete indifference any change in his fate.
The first wheelbarrows rumbled on the ladder, shovels screeched against stone.
“Come here,” the caretaker said to Dugaev. - Here's your place. - He measured out the cubature of the face and put a mark - a piece of quartz. “This way,” he said. - The trapper will get you a board to the main ladder. Carry where and everything. Here's a shovel, a pick, a crowbar, a wheelbarrow - take it.
Dugaev dutifully began work.
Even better, he thought. None of the comrades will grumble that he does not work well. Former grain growers are not required to understand and know that Dugaev is a beginner, that immediately after school he began to study at the university, and exchanged the university bench for this slaughter. Every man for himself. They are not obliged, they should not understand that he has been exhausted and hungry for a long time, that he does not know how to steal: the ability to steal is the main northern virtue in all its forms, from the bread of a comrade to the issuance of thousands of bonuses to the authorities for non-existent, non-former achievements. No one cares that Dugaev cannot endure a sixteen-hour working day.
Dugaev drove, fired, poured, drove again and again fired and poured.
After the lunch break, the caretaker came, looked at what Dugaev had done, and silently left ... Dugaev again fired and poured. It was still very far from the quartz mark.
In the evening the caretaker came again and unwound the tape measure. - He measured what Dugaev did.
“Twenty-five percent,” he said, and looked at Dugaev. - Twenty-five percent. Do you hear?
- I hear, - said Dugaev. This number surprised him. The work was so hard, so little stone was picked up with a shovel, it was so hard to pick. The figure - twenty-five percent of the norm - seemed to Dugaev very large. Calves ached, from the emphasis on the wheelbarrow, my arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably. The feeling of hunger had long since left him.
Dugaev ate because he saw how others were eating, something told him: you need to eat. But he didn't want to eat.
“Well, well,” said the caretaker, leaving. - I wish you well.
In the evening, Dugaev was summoned to the investigator. He answered four questions: name, surname, article, term. Four questions that are asked thirty times a day to a prisoner. Then Dugaev went to bed. The next day, he again worked with the brigade, with Baranov, and on the night of the day after tomorrow, soldiers led him behind the convoy, and led him along a forest path to a place where, almost blocking a small gorge, there was a high fence with barbed wire stretched on top, and from where at night the distant chirring of tractors could be heard. And, realizing what was the matter, Dugaev regretted that he had worked in vain, that this last day had been tormented in vain.
Varlaam Shalamov is a writer who spent three terms in camps, survived hell, lost his family and friends, but was not broken by ordeals: “A camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone. A person - neither the chief nor the prisoner needs to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.<…>For my part, I decided a long time ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this very truth.
The collection "Kolyma Tales" is the main work of the writer, which he composed for almost 20 years. These stories leave an extremely heavy impression of horror from the fact that people really survived in this way. The main themes of the works: camp life, breaking the character of prisoners. All of them doomedly waited for imminent death, without cherishing hopes, without entering into a struggle. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention. All heroes are unhappy, their destinies are ruthlessly broken. The language of the work is simple, unpretentious, not embellished with expressive means, which creates the feeling of a true story of an ordinary person, one of the many who experienced all this.
Analysis of the stories "At Night" and "Condensed Milk": Problems in "Kolyma Tales"
The story "Night" tells us about a case that does not immediately fit in our heads: two prisoners, Bagretsov and Glebov, dig up a grave in order to remove linen from the corpse and sell it. Moral and ethical principles have been erased, given way to the principles of survival: the heroes will sell linen, buy some bread or even tobacco. The themes of life on the verge of death, doom run like a red thread through the work. Prisoners do not value life, but for some reason they survive, indifferent to everything. The problem of brokenness opens before the reader, it is immediately clear that after such shocks a person will never be the same.
The story "Condensed Milk" is devoted to the problem of betrayal and meanness. Geological engineer Shestakov was “lucky”: in the camp he avoided compulsory work, ended up in an “office”, where he receives good food and clothes. The prisoners did not envy the free, but such as Shestakov, because the camp narrowed the interests to everyday ones: “Only something external could bring us out of indifference, take us away from the slowly approaching death. External, not internal strength. Inside, everything was burned out, devastated, we didn’t care, and we didn’t make any plans beyond tomorrow.” Shestakov decided to assemble a group to escape and hand over to the authorities, having received some privileges. This plan was unraveled by the nameless main character familiar to the engineer. The hero demands two cans of canned milk for his participation, this is the ultimate dream for him. And Shestakov brings a treat with a “monstrous blue sticker”, this is the hero’s revenge: he ate both cans under the eyes of other prisoners who did not expect a treat, just watched a more successful person, and then refused to follow Shestakov. The latter nevertheless persuaded the others and coolly surrendered them. For what? Where does this desire to curry favor and expose those who are even worse off? V. Shalamov answers this question unambiguously: the camp corrupts and kills everything human in the soul.
Analysis of the story "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev"
If most of the heroes of "Kolyma Tales" live indifferently for no reason, then in the story "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev" the situation is different. After the end of the Great Patriotic War former soldiers poured into the camps, whose only fault was that they were captured. People who fought against the Nazis cannot simply live indifferently, they are ready to fight for their honor and dignity. Twelve newly arrived prisoners, led by Major Pugachev, organized a conspiracy to escape, which is being prepared all winter. And so, when spring came, the conspirators burst into the premises of the guard detachment and, having shot the guard on duty, took possession of the weapon. Keeping the suddenly awakened fighters at gunpoint, they change into military uniform and stock up on provisions. Having gone outside the camp, they stop a truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue on their way in the car until the gas runs out. After that, they go to the taiga. Despite the willpower and determination of the heroes, the camp car overtakes them and shoots them. Only Pugachev was able to leave. But he understands that soon they will find him. Does he dutifully wait for punishment? No, even in this situation he shows fortitude, he himself interrupts his difficult life path: “Major Pugachev remembered them all - one after another - and smiled at everyone. Then he put the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth and fired for the last time in his life. Subject strong man in the suffocating circumstances of the camp, it reveals itself tragically: he is either crushed by the system, or he fights and dies.
"Kolyma Tales" does not try to pity the reader, but how much suffering, pain and longing are in them! Everyone should read this collection in order to appreciate their life. After all, despite all the usual problems, modern man there is relative freedom and choice, he can show other feelings and emotions besides hunger, apathy and the desire to die. "Kolyma stories" not only scare, but also make you look at life differently. For example, stop complaining about fate and feeling sorry for yourself, because we are unspeakably more fortunate than our ancestors, brave, but ground in the millstones of the system.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!
