The passage was posted on an earlier thread. IIRC Solzhenitsyn writes about how he sat down in exhaustion and despair, fully expecting the guards to come over and beat him to death at any moment and resigned to his fate. Just then another prisoner comes over and draws a cross in the dirt. Solzhenitsyn has a revelation that there is a power greater than the state, one that will outlast it, and it gives him the strength and determination to get up and endure.
That’s a completely different story than McCain’s.