The novel begins with a description of Ivan's waking up to the sound of a hammer being banged against a metal rail, the sound muffled by a thick crust of heavy ice on the windows. Usually, Ivan gets up immediately to begin his battle for survival by doing odd jobs which will bring him extra food, but on this particular day, he feels ill and stays in his bunk.
He listens to the noises of the awakening barracks, afraid that the rumors of an impending reassignment of duties for his work gang might be true. He hopes that Tyurin, his gang boss, can bribe the authorities to let them keep their current work project, since reassignment could mean working without shelter on a bare field for at least a month, and without being able to make a fire. A new assignment could also mean grave illness or death to him and his fellow gang members.
As Ivan makes up his mind to go to the infirmary and put himself on the sick list, he is surprised by the arrival of a sadistic guard, nicknamed the Thin Tartar, who announces that Ivan will have to spend three days in "the can," the prison blockhouse, for not getting up immediately. Ivan is relieved. At least he will get hot food, and he won't be forced to go outside to work. Protesting all the while, however, Ivan follows the Thin Tartar to the Commandant's office, sure that his comrades will keep his breakfast for him.
Solzhenitsyn chooses to open his story at reveille in a labor camp in Siberia, describing his protagonist as he is being awakened. This seems to be a logical place to start an account of a typical day in such a camp, but we must remember that several masterpieces of modern literature use the same technique for their opening scene. In Franz Kafka's enigmatic existentialist novel The Trial, the protagonist Josef K. awakens to find himself being arrested for having committed a crime which is never explained. In Kafka's story The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awakens from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic, odious insect, without ever finding out explicitly for what reason. Other authors place their protagonists into this state between sleep and waking, where the character and the readers have difficulty deciding whether or not the events to follow are a dream or reality.
