When Ivan returns to his barracks, there is a commotion because somebody's bread ration has been stolen while they were at work. Ivan finds his own bread intact in its hiding place and runs to the mess hall to join his gang for supper. In the mess hall, the manager and his orderlies are trying to keep order by using force when necessary. The fight for food is ruthless, and the otherwise meek Ivan brutally shoves a smaller prisoner out of the way when he needs a tray for his gang.
The food rations at supper are measured according to work output, and Ivan is rewarded for his good work by receiving a bigger bread portion than the others. In addition, he also has Caesar's portion, and so he contentedly settles down to his usual meal ritual. While he eats, he watches Y-81, a tall, old prisoner, and he thinks about what he has heard about the man, who has become a legend in the prison camps. After his meal, Ivan sets out to buy some tobacco from a Latvian in another barracks, a plan he put off in the morning on his way to the hospital.
In this episode, then, we see that after the elation of his bricklaying work and the joy of his luck at the search point, the depressing facts of camp life again fill Ivan's mind. Some bread (luckily, not his) has been stolen from his barracks, and the mess room orderlies, prisoners themselves, tyrannize the inmates by exercising the miniscule amount of authority given to them by the authorities. Here, Solzhenitsyn uses a theme which has been used in many works that are set in prisons, prisoner-of-war camps, and in mental hospitals: that is, the oppressed make the best oppressors. Other examples of this can be found in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in Henri Charriere's Papillon, and in Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp novel, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.
