Darkness at Noon Book Review by Hadrian Jeffs Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. Hungarian-born Koestler was a left-wing journalist who abandoned the Communism of his youth when confronted by the reality of Stalin’s purges, and the blind-eye that Communist parties around the world turned to them.
He became an acerbic commentator not only on the extremes of radical politics, but the centrist consensus amongst the democracies that permitted them to thrive in the name of peace. He also turned a scornful eye on what he saw as the blithe arrogance of a complacent scientific community.
Darkness at Noon is a story of Rubashov, a once-esteemed Bolshevik veteran of the Octobrist Revolution, who had played a key role in building the Soviet Union. Now, twenty years later, he founds himself on trial by the very state he helped create, for treason. His crime? The greatest betrayal any revolutionary can commit against the revolution; he has doubts.
Perhaps most famous for giving us that blandly sinister aphorism, “the end justifies the means”. Darkness at Noon remains as relevant today, in its portrayal of the abuse of power, the betrayal of ideals. And the subjugation of humanity, as it was when first published in the darkest hour of 1940Rubashov:
“Our press and schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as if the Rights of Man had never been.”Rubashov (commenting on the consequences of those means that he had helped provide the Revolution with, so that it might achieve its idealistic ends):
“So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument; death.”
Darkness at Noon Book Review by Hadrian Jeffs
