I read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler a few weeks ago. For some reason I didn't feel like writing an immediate response to it. Probably because I felt like whenever I write about a book immediately after finishing it I tend to feel rushed and not able to clearly communicate what I thought of the complete work, but just a minute part that intrigued me. I was going to wait a day or two, but then kept putting it off until now. Hopefully I can remember enough about it to make sense.
Darkness at Noon is a novel about a former revolutionist who is arrested by the government he helped to gain power. It is set in Communist Russia in between the first and second world wars. The whole of the novel is set in a jail cell, but the main character, Rubashov, frequently daydreams about his part in the revolution and the significant things that led to his arrest. Knowing that Koestler was a former Communist who had become disillusioned with the movement after the Stalinist show trials (of which the main character is a victim) and other detestable practices perpetrated by the Soviet government makes this novel something of a historical fiction and less of a literary exploration of ideas. I am certainly more used to novels having less to do with the setting and more about the general theme, but I believe this book did have a theme that can be explored further than just taking the story at face value.
The theme I was most interested with was the suppression of ideas for the sake of a movement. The reason that Rubashov was arrested was that he disagreed with how the communist government was being handled by "Number 1"(the name given to Stalin in the novel). He had no plans to overthrow the government or assassinate the leader, but his objection to policy was enough to have him arrested and sentenced to execution. Much of the story is focused on the methods of coercion and interrogation used to convince Rubashov to admit to false accusations, giving the novel another theme (probably more prominent than the one I am addressing) of how a imprisoned and hopeless person reacts to an antagonist. Like I said, I am more interested in how the government reacts to dissent than I am the confined person.
Basically the idea that interested me was that the Russian government (and that style of communism in general) had an ideal that they wished to achieve. This ideal was a sort of utopia where all are equal in economic circumstance and workload. The problem was that they believed that it took forcing people into much worse economic conditions and much harder labor in order to eventually reach this ideal society. It reminds me of the double-speak in Orwell's 1984, war is peace, love is hate, etc. "Number 1" had his idea of how to accomplish his ideal and that was through making all who were in the country submit to his values and principals through force. Only by overpowering the people will they eventually realize that his way to achieve equality was the correct way. Only through enslavement and suffering would they be beaten enough to know his way is the correct way. It is a very logical and reasonable method, despite it being completely inhumane and during the conditioning of the people the opposite of the utopia he wishes to achieve. This is what interests me. Is it okay to do something negative if it achieves something more positive than the former action was negative.
For example, say you are a soldier at war, and a man in your sights has a trigger for an offsite bomb. This bomb is going to kill many people (Lets say they are also soldiers, not innocent bystanders). Now, you don't believe in killing, even killing the enemies you are fighting in this war (you were drafted into the military). Would it be okay for you to take on this sin of killing so that the other man doesn't sin himself and kill many people. Obviously his sin has much greater consequences than yours. You are taking one life, he is taking many. Does that make your lesser sin a worthwhile one? If you let him live, do you take some of the responsibility for the lives of those he will kill, or does the responsibility lie solely with him? We all know what our answer to this question is. Being a pacifist, I would say that I wouldn't kill him, leaving myself clean and him responsible for his own actions. Others would say that they would share in the guilt if they didn't stop him from killing, and therefore decide that they would kill the man. There are good arguments on both sides, but the real question is: Which one of these is wrong and which one right?
The communist government believed in freedom of thought and freedom of ideas, but they thought the best way to get there was to restrict said freedom for a time until the revolution was completed and there were no biases based on past economic conditions. They believed that once the people were all rooted in equal experience and not biased by their unequal past, that they would all realize the merits of communism and then be able to keep their government accountable. Until then Number 1's ideas were the only ideas permitted to speak about. It is utilitarian ethics at it's core. The suffering that they caused for a short period of history is much less than the amount joy they will eventually bring. They were killing the lives of the present in order to save those in the future. Is that right? Say they were correct in their ideas and it actually worked. Would they still have blood on their hands?
I don't really have an answer to that question, but it sure is fun to think about.
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