Prisoners are not allowed to carry watches; they have to judge the time of day by the position of the sun. But when Ivan deduces that it is noon because the sun is directly overhead, the Captain remarks that the observation is an outdated superstition: the Soviet Government has passed a law that decrees that when the sun is directly overhead, it is 1 P.M. Ivan wonders naively whether the sun now falls under Soviet law, too.
While most days seem to go by quickly with hard work, the end of Ivan's prison sentence does not seem to come any closer. Ivan, who has already served eight years of his term, is teased about having "one foot already out of the camp."
This teasing is done mostly by prisoners sentenced after 1949 (after the "good old days"), when the previous ten-year prison sentences were converted to automatic twenty-five-year terms. Ivan cannot understand how anybody could survive twenty-five years in a "special" camp, but he also does not really believe that he will be released in two years. He remembers many prisoners with original three-year sentences, who had five years added on at the end of their first term. He would not be surprised to have another ten years added to his term. The best he can do is not to think about the end of his sentence and to accept whatever is in store for him. During this good-natured joking about his impending release, Ivan begins to daydream again, this time about the reason for his being in the camp.
