This study will provide a review of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel Cancer Ward. The review will consider the information and knowledge conveyed in the book, the major issues and themes in the book, and what the two main characters (Kostoglotov the protagonist and Rusanov the antagonist) lived by, or what sustained them in life.
In the author's letter to the Fourth Congress of Soviet Writers, which is included in the Bantam edition, he argues for the end to Soviet censorship. It is ironic that the letter was written arguing for the end to official delays in publishing this novel, for Cancer Ward is certainly one of the least overtly politically threatening of his works. It certainly can be interpreted as a veiled indictment of the oppression of the totalitarian Soviet system, but at least on the surface it is far less such an indictment than many of his earlier works.
Still, Cancer Ward touches on many issues which are critical of the Soviet system directly and indirectly, but what makes this novel different from the author's other more directly political works is the fact that he focuses more on the personal and internal realities of the main characters.
Kostoglotov is a former prisoner whose need to know what is happening to him, the nature of his disease and the process of treatment, springs from the consciousness of a man who has learned to distrust all authority. Although the issue is cancer rather than politics, the division between the two men in terms of what sustains them can be applied to politics as well: whereas Kostoglotov needs to know everything that is really going on, Rusanov prefers to know nothing at all and to live in a fantasy world. Those choices comprise what might be said to sustain the two men---Kostoglotov is sustained by his intellectual need to know, while Rusanov is sustained by his desire to remain in a cocoon of ignorance. One man refuses to trust the authorities, while the other gives himself an...