We do feel as if we experience Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s cold, hunger, fear, and exhaustion, as well as the flashes of comfort he snatches in the present—“The smoke seemed to reach every part of his hungry body, he felt it in his feet as well as in his head”—or remembers with disbelief: “great hefty lumps of meat. Milk they used to lap up till their bellies were bursting.”
