“The hard lump of his tumor-unexpected, meaningless and quite without use-had dragged him like a fish on a hook and had flung him into this iron bed-a narrow, mean bed, with creaking springs and an apology for a mattress. Having once undressed under the stairs, said good-bye to this family and come up to the ward, you felt the door to all your past life had been slammed behind you, and the life here was so vile that it frightened you more than the actual tumor. He could no longer choose something pleasant or soothing to look at: he had to look at the eight abject beings who were now his “equals” in faded and worn pink pajamas, patched and torn here and there and almost all the wrong size: he had to listen to these uncultured creatures and their wearisome conversations which had nothing to do with him and were of no interest to him.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Cancer Ward”, 1968.
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