Silence by Jane Brox
Author:Jane Brox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
August 17. Wm. Caldwell, alias, Frederick Amey. No. 39 (w) Aged 21. Farmer, cannot read or write, parents dead. Idiotic. Time Out.
August 20. Amos Davis. No. 43. (c) Aged 36. Laborer, Cannot read or write. Died.
October 18. Jacob King. No 77. (w) Aged 33. Miller. Can Read and write. Died.
October 22. Charles Williams. No. 1. (c) Aged 20. Laborer can read taught shoemaking. Time Out.
November 9: James Allen. No. 45 (c) Aged 44. Laborer. Cannot read or write. was a slave. Time Out.
Howard Moore, an old convict, was let out on November 11. John Curran, a gardener, on the 17th. John Starne, a paper maker, on the 25th. He was the last to be freed that year.
To Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, Eastern State and its competing system at Auburn let different kinds of citizens back into the world, perhaps a little at odds with Rush’s hope for the conforming soul: “The Philadelphia system being also that which produces the deepest impressions on the soul of the convict, must effect more reformation than that of Auburn. The latter, however, is perhaps more conformable to the habits of men in society, and on this account effects a greater number of reformations, which might be called ‘legal,’ inasmuch as they produce the external fulfillment of social obligations . . . If it be so, the Philadelphia system produces more honest men, and that of New York more obedient citizens.”
But whether released from Eastern State, Auburn, or any number of other silent prisons, the inmates couldn’t help but be unanchored upon their discharge. Their bearing would have been different after years of solitude and silence, and even the feel of their old clothes must have been strange. Their gait may have changed, and their size. They would need to recover their voices. The muscles used for speech are also used for breathing and eating, so they wouldn’t have atrophied completely, but their voice boxes would have been weak; their ears, sensitive.
For those imprisoned in Yaroslavl, Eugenia Ginzburg notes in her memoir, the sound of voices for the newly released was its own reward. She recalls being transferred from her solitary cell to the car of a freight train, which would spell the start of her journey to the Gulag. She traveled with a crowd of other prisoners who’d also been in solitary: “None of us stopped talking for a single moment. No one listened to anyone else, and there was no common theme: each of us talked about her own affairs from the moment the train left Yaroslavl. Some began to recite verses, sing, and tell stories . . . It was the first time for two years that we had been surrounded by fellow human beings, and every one of us was rejoicing in the sound of her own voice . . . Those in solitary confinement had virtually not spoken for seven hundred and thirty days. For all that time they had heard some six or seven words a day: Get up, hot water, walk, washroom, dinner, lights out.
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