Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

It occurred to me once that if they wanted to crush, to annihilate a man totally, to punish him with the most terrible punishment, so that the most dreadful murderer would shudder at this punishment and be frightened of it beforehand, they would only need to give the labor a character of complete, total uselessness and meaninglessness. If present-day hard labor is uninteresting and boring for the convict, it is still reasonable in itself, as labor: the prisoner makes bricks, digs the earth, plasters, builds; there is meaning and purpose. The worker sometimes even gets carried away by it, wants to do it better, more quickly, more skillfully. But if he were forced, for instance, to pour water from one tub into another and from the other into the first, to grind sand, to carry a pile of dirt from one place to another and back again—I think the prisoner would hang himself after a few days, or commit a thousand crimes, to die rather than endure such humiliation, shame, and torment.