Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.94 You Save: $0.05 (1%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.11 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Darkness at Noon
Book Review: Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a literary masterpiece. Koestler not only writes well, but his novels explore ideas and makes complex life experiences accessible. Rubashov's experience is the experience of hundreds of millions of people in communist countries. Those of us who have not witnessed a communist revolution in our own countries have a hard time understanding their experience. Darkness at Noon helps us to do that. We cannot say we understand communism without having read this book.
Koestler writes in layers. He doesn't waste his words. The story may appear simple, but there is a purpose to the sequence of events and in each of Rubashov's action. Each conversation has a message.
This is much more than the story of a man wrongly condemned. We can find that simple plot in Arthur Miller's the Crucible. This story explains how it is possible that people like Rubashov, intelligent and idealistic people, could have lent themselves, heart and soul, to a totalitarian ideology. We learn that communism is a wolf in sheep's clothing. A peddler of impossible dreams. Nearly everyone, including many of its once loyal followers, end up disillusioned. People are betrayed, terrorized, imprisoned, and killed by the system they once supported and helped bring to power.
Koestler leaves the reader with the understanding that communism is deadly and evil precisely because it appeals to our idealism and love for others. That it continues to survive through deception, lies, fear, and by creating suspicion, distrust, and paranoia in people.
Arthur Koestler was a former communist. This novel is a work of fiction only in its editing and the charachters' names. Rubashov most likely represents Koestler and all the blind idealists who once believed in communism until there was communism.
Between Koestler and Soltzhenitsyn, they've left only fools believing in communism.
Book Review: Best thing to come out of Clinton impeachment
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up this book because of the reference made to it by Sydney Blumenthal in his Senate deposition. Apparently, Clinton related to Blumenthal that he saw himself as the book's imprisoned protagonist who is endlessly interrogated by a communist automaton (i.e. Starr). However, in reading the book I connected Clinton more with the communist interrogator, than the interrogatee. Both Clinton and the Communist philospophy laid out by Koestler value the ends over the means. For the Soviets, one man is meaningless if he hinders the "good" of mankind. It makes no difference to them if innocent people are put to death, so long as it advances their cause. Likewise, for Clinton it makes no difference how heinously his lapdogs destroy the reputations of others, so long as he survives. Personally, I find the Soviets perspective a little more noble but read the book to make the judgement for yourself.All in all, it's a great book and my reading of it was the one good thing to result from the impeachment trial.
Book Review: Bolsheviks Hijacked Communism & Exposed Collectivism's Flaws
Summary: 5 Stars
The goal of Darkness at Noon is not necessarily to denounce Communism, but rather to expose the flaws of collectivism that the Bolsheviks had pursued--what happens when a country is consolidated into a single "corporation", no matter how good the initial intentions may be. Two philosophies are subtly and indirectly compared in this book: individualism and collectivism. "Collectivism holds that the individual is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of the group." [Mark da Cunha of Capitalism.org] This sums up the philosophy that the characters in Darkness at Noon believed. As a result of this philosophy, the collective group becomes the standard of ethics, instead of the individual.
Socialism and liberal democracy have at least one thing in common--Both sides believe government is needed to put a limit on individual decision-making power, and ensure the fair enforcement of laws. But one main difference is that the ideal result of socialism was that freedom from oppression, particularly from the bourgeoisie, would be achieved through economic equality. The theory sounds good, but Darkness at Noon presented it as a goal that eluded them and was impossible to attain.
Koestler plays the concepts of egoism and altruism against each other: whether an individual should be more concerned with self-preservation or self-sacrifice for the good of the community. In collectivism, the individual is only a means of achieving the end goals, so altruism is valued and promoted. Rubashov charges the Party of acting only to preserve itself, rather than for the best interest of the masses. It is as if the Party organization itself hypocritically practices egoism, while it calls for altruism from its members. But then Rubashov's interregator accuses him of doing exactly the same thing.
The first major problem with communism or collectivism is that people cannot freely disagree. One example is recorded in Rubashov's diary entry:
"A short time ago, our leading agriculturist, B., was shot with thirty of his collaborators because he maintained the opinion that nitrate artificial manure was superior to potash." (p. 79) In this particular case, the truth was decided by the person in charge.
The next major problem that Koestler exposes is the question of who decides what is truth. Why should the person in charge decide truth just because he happens to have power? Why should he have the ability to decide what is right? In this system, it is the Party that decides what is true and false.
Individuals are denied free-will, or the power to make decisions for themselves. If they do make a decision, it has to be according to policy. If they make a bad decision, they will be punished. Rubashov makes a good point: "How can the present decide what will be judged truth in the future? We are doing the work of prophets without their gift."
In collectivism, people cannot decide for themselves what is morally right and wrong. Ethics are controlled by the Party. What is good and bad is relative to what the Party allows. If people are not free to disagree and decide what is truth, how can the Party know how to truly represent the masses? Rubashov believed that the main reason why the communist system was failing was because it no longer represented the people.
It seemed like the Party wanted to create a nation of mindless robots, without any free-will to make choices. They would have to use force when necessary to subject the people to the whim of the Party. They wanted to erase the boundaries of the individual and merge people into the collective. They wanted to eliminate the pronoun "I" from their vocabulary as if it was "grammatical fiction."
If the goal of the Bolshevik's communism was to achieve freedom from oppression through economic equality, then it failed. Collectivism is inherently oppressive. If a struggle to free people from suffering only results in more suffering, then it defeats its own purpose.
Book Review: Brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
Darkness at Noon certainly deserves its place among the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century. It seems that no other work of any genre captures the thought behind the Communist movement of the century nearly as well. Furthermore, Koestler does so within a suspenceful, totally entertaining, and always enlightening novel.The novel concerns Rubashov. Ruvashov was a great figure in the rise of Communism in Russia, but now, he has begun to realize the failures of his country and has been arrested. Two interrogators are appointed to get Rubashov to confess to bogus charges against the government. As he undergoes his imprisonment and interrogations, Rubashov begins to realize where he went wrong and where his country went wrong...I think that Koestler wasn't so much protesting the evils of Communism as an idea as he was protesting the way Communism was carried out in Russia. He shows how Communism failed in Russia because the idea of "the ends justifying the means" was followed so strictly. Following that code, Russia lost its spiritual center. It forgot to care for the individual.
There's really a lot more to the novel than that. There's no way a short review can do justice to the novel. I'll just say that Darkness at Noon is a masterpiece. Any intelligent reader should experience the novel. The experience will not be regreted.
Book Review: Brilliant . . . Literate . . . Compelling
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read Koestler's Darkness at Noon in high school, close to 30 years ago. Although I cannot recall my earlier reaction to the book, I am certain that I was not prepared, as a 17-year old, to appreciate either the literary beeauty or socio-political importance of Koestler's masterpiece. I came back to this book for two reasons. I had just finished reading Volkogonov's "Stalin" and "Trotsky" and Solzhenitzyn's Red Wheel (Volume I). Darknesss at Noon seemed to be the next appropriate book to pick up off the shelf.
I had also been reading about the remarks President Clinton made (alluded to by other reviewers) to Sid Blumenthal indicating that he felt "like the prisoner in Darkness at Noon."
It is, perhaps, either a sad testament to human nature, or an indicia of the power of great literature, that the story of the fate of one (fictional) man, Rubashov, can feel more compelling than the narrative description (in "Stalin" and "Trotsky") of the fate of millions.
Further, whereas Volkogonov's works go a long way towards explaining what happened and how it happened, Rubashov's self-crticial analysis, and his dialogues with Ivanov and then Gletkin go a long way towards explaining why the purges happened. It helps explain the mindset of those many, like Rubashov, who confessed their non-existent sins before their ineveitable demise. It also goes a long way to explaing why so many millions of people actively participated in the denunciations that accompanied the purges and show trials.
Clinton's comparison to Rubashov is rich with unintended irony. Perhaps Clinton, like me, had not read the book since high school, and felt that Rubashov was the purely innocent victim of a prosecutorial system run amok. However, Koestler makes it clear that Rubashov was not merely a vicitim of Stalin, or Stalin's henchmen, but of the system that Rubashov (a hero of the revolution) himself played an important role in creating. Rubashov spent a life filled with deceit, manipulation, and even murder, on behalf of his party and its "core values". The doctrine of the end justifying the means was a cornersone of Rubashov's philosphy and morality. Whatever "core values" existed at the beginning of his revolutionary life with the party had long since withered to nothingness by the time of his imprisonment. Consequently, if President Clinton's comparison of himself to Rubashov was based upon the idea that Rubashov was a purely innocent victim, he is just wrong. To the extent Clinton was aware that Rubashov was in no small way responsible for creating the milieu under which this despicable actvity takes place - then he is more self-aware than I had previously given him credit for.
Finally, the book is just darn well-written. Of particular beauty and impact are Rubashov's dialues with his interrogators.
Pick up this book and read it.