In a time period where an individual’s image is usually defined by the code in which prison guards refer to them as, tattoos play a fundamental roll in allowing these prisoners to view themselves, yet convergence or assimilation seems to remain prevalent throughout the use of tattoos in Gulag prisons. In Alexei Plutser-Sarno’s The Language of the Body and Politics, we are shown how tattoos can act as a vor v zakone’s service record. This secret language of ink can show us all types in things including achievements and past tribulations that the holder has endured. Even when everything else physical can be stripped away, clothes, family members, food, yet the ideas of the memories or legacy cannot be killed. You can place ten tattoo-ridden…show more content… Tattoos serve a much fuller purpose than just blotches of color on the skin or bumper sticker idioms, in fact, tattoos are able to tell us quite a lot about the culture as an entirety. Just by studying the ink of one prisoner can already exhume massive details about their personal life. It serves as a life story being illustrated through the body, and this tradition has held through even to today. They can represent feelings or memories of feelings, religious beliefs, support or disapproval of political regimes, drug addictions, sicknesses, or even sexual preferences. The ingenuity behind their multiple purposes brings to light just how deeply rooted painting these pictures on the skin in ink is to these prisoners. Thieves realized that they were able to use this as a means of hidden communication. Now these images and words don’t only server as a preface to their background story, but can also have more than one meaning to them. By understanding the differences in the types of pictures being drawn, one is able to convey a message from one thief to another without any form of verbal agitation. Prisoners and thieves alike have divulged an intricate form of communication that is
