Toward the end of the novel, Kostoglotov – who, like Solzhenitsyn, was forced into exile under "Article 58", which dealt with counter-revolutionaries – realizes that the damage done to him, and to Russia, was too great. There will be no healing, no normal life now that Stalin has gone. On the day of his release from the cancer ward, toward the end of the novel, he visits a zoo, seeing in the animals people he knew: "[E]ven supposing Oleg took their side and had the power, he would still not want to break into the cages and liberate them ... [D]eprived of their home surroundings, they had lost the idea of rational freedom. It would only make things harder for them, suddenly to set them free".