Rating: 
Summary: Excellent commentary on the nature of communism.
Review: Finally finished Darkness at Noon. It was quite good. It's basically an account of the arrest, interrogation, and trial of N. S. Rubashov, a fictional Russian communist. He is one of the few survivors of the original revolution. No. 1 (Stalin) has decided that Rubashov must be removed from power and killed. He is arrested, jailed, and placed under the jurisdiction of a former friend, Ivanov. Ivanov is arrested and shot for being too soft with Rubashov. Rubashov then falls into the hands of Gletkin, a young and brutal communist. Gletkin subjects Rubashov to brutal interrogations and eventually obtains a confession of treason. Rubashov is then tried and shot. Much of the book tells the story of Rubashov's life through flashbacks. It tells of his work for the party, offering harsh evidence of the communist principal that the end justifies the means. This principal, along with several others, is examined and referenced throughout the book. Koestler offers much social commentary on communism, man's nature, and his historical plight. Overall, the book is bleak and depressing. Dark images such as the suicide of a dockworker who cannot understand the changing position of the party, the torture and execution of Rubashov's secretary, and the condemnation of a faithful but misguided communist youth pervade Darkness at Noon. In just over 200 pages, Koestler offers philosophy, history, and fascinating characterization.
Rating: 
Summary: I thought it was marvelous....
Review: The horror that was the Stalinist Great Terror have never been captured with such emotion, tragedy, and...darkness. The brilliance of this novel lies in that fact that it is able to make strong intellectual statements while showing the moral failure of a whole world. Emotion and philosophy come togeather in a way that is unsurpassed. What scholars have come to understand about the Great Terror in recent years is that we cannot understand why it happened by studying history. One must ask philosophical and moral questions to understand this destruction of an enitre universe. Beats 1984, Anthem, and Brave New World all to hell...
Rating:
Summary: Anguish in the early years of the SOviet Union
Review: Arthur Koestler does a great job in this novel portraying the hell that was living under the imprisonment of a very real totalitarian communist state. The story is about a woman professor who is arrested by the Russian secret police for conspiracy. She is sent to the Siberian GULAG and learns to survive the horrible ordeal with the help of other prisoners. The story graphically illustrates the methods used by the Soviet Union to interrogate, intimidate and flat-out torture (mentally, pshychologically and physical) those who they felt were a threat to the state. This is a must-read for any history buffs, as the setting is just before the beginning of WW2.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Is one man's life worth more than another's?
Review: All through this book I thought about a medieval contraption I had once read about. It was a box designed to imprison somebody, but the box was too short for the prisoner to stand and not long enough for the prisoner to lie down. It is a cruel irony that the man who designed this contraption was the first man to be sentenced to it.
Such is the irony of Rubashov's imprisonment, that this man who had stood by as his friends and lover were wrongfully accused and convicted would eventually suffer the same fate himself. That the same party that he had worked his life to build would one day turn on him. I enjoyed this book a lot. Koestler's book lays out a wonderful panorama of what happens when we put mankind above man, while attesting that the ends always to justify the means.
Rating:
Summary: Great book that incites thought
Review: The standout point of Darkness at Noon is the political discussion of Communism and the Russian Revolution. What makes the book great is that it takes a subject that has a good possibility of becoming boring and unreadable and is able to hold your attention. If you find political discussion interesting, this is a definate read, if not, it helps to understand a big part of history, Russia and communism.
Rating:
Summary: The Father of Lies Political Primer...
Review: DARKNESS AT NOON remains one of the 20th Century's most incisive political allegories because of its ironic, literal historicism. The title refers to the hour when Christ, whom Christians revere and worship as personal Savior and Redeemer of Fallen Man in history, dies a criminal's death. Rome and people he came to serve are the instruments of execution wherein THE DELIVERER is delivered to abandonment and ultimate shame. Koestler's Rubashov is no Christ. On the contrary, he is a consummate liar and has lived his life ruthlessly pursuing POWER in guise of "deliverer" and friend of freedom. Arthur Koestler...former communist who witnessed The(first)Great Betrayal incarnated in Stalinist Purge Trials of the late 1930's...writes his novel in form of "anti-Augustinian" confession.Its banal, un-melodramatic narrative of a politcal revolutionary's life as idealogue, spy and terrorist is anti-Gospel..."bad news"...that would enslave and murder millions in the cause of secular salvation. Rubashov stands for ruthless men...would be self-apotheosized gods...promising land, bread and end to tyranny.History shows what their Darkness at Noon brought. The novel...along with Czeslaw Milosz'essay THE CAPTIVE MIND...is recommended to readers needing refresher in psychology of political deceit. Americans who believe Political Correctness serves anything but a "Judas Project" might find Koestler's closing chapter of DARKNESS AT NOON ("The Grammatical Fiction") particularly illuminating/unnerving. Koestler's Rubashov is neither hero nor anti-hero. He is totalitarian bureaucrat; a secular demon serving a secular Hell.DARKNESS AT NOON is portrait of a dedicated liar following the Political Primer of the Father of Lies......
Rating: 
Summary: A good book if one can understand
Review: The novel Darkness at Noon would be a very good book if the person who is reading it were very into politics and communism. In order to understand this book completely the reader needs to be very well informed of the past. In this way they need to be able to understand history and know a lot about it. They also need to be able to compare Koestlers story and actual history and put the two together. The reader also needs to be able to realize that the story is parallel to Machiavelli and Stalin. The main character Rubashov refers to Machiavelli and Stalin a great deal in the story even though it is never actually stated that he is talking about the two of them. It seems that the character Rubashov wants to be like them and that he has in the past tried to make what he was doing to be something that they would have done.
If a reader does not know a great deal about history they can begin to like the book if they pay attention to what is happening to Rubashov. Although there are not many things that go on outside of Rubashov trying to figure out what he is going to do about his trial. In order to read the book for this purpose a reader really needs to concentrate and understand that there are things going on in the background. The reader will also need to read between the lines and think more into the psychological meaning of the book. If a person is reading to book for this they will pay more attention to the conversations that Rubashov has with other cell mates and his love for Avolra. The reader would also want to pay attention to the conflict that Rubashov has with himself.
Darkness at Noon was written to give a person an image about what would happen if one was a communist and was trying to change the world. There is so many things that go on in the book that it is very hard for a reader to grasp one concept before Koestler is already going on and almost done with the next thing that the reader should grasp. If one was to read this book they should be older and be able to understand more of the themes in the story rather than to read it at a young age and not being able to understand what they are reading while they are reading the novel.
Rating:
Summary: The Real Story on Communism
Review: Arthur Koestler wrote this book after his disillusionment with Communism led him to reject his Marxist beliefs. Communism is, and will always be, an intellectual movement. It is probably the only form of government that came from books and writings of intellectuals. Apologists and other types of Neo-Marxists today try and shrug off the atrocities of Communism. They say that Stalinism and the like were not really Communism but an autocracy cloaking itself in proletariat trappings. These people are wrong, of course. Communism killed more people than National Socialism ever did. Even the chaos of democratic government cannot claim the body counts of Communism. In this book, Koestler tries to show how everything went wrong. The book traces the arrest, interrogation and trial of Rubashov, a fictional composite of several real figures associated with Communist Russia. The one figure that leaps to mind immediately is Leon Trotsky. Every time Rubashov rubs his spectacles on his sleeve, I think of good old Trotsky (a murderous thug who got an axe in the head in Mexico, thanks to his old pal Uncle Joe Stalin). Regardless of who Rubashov is modeled on, comrade Rubashov is in trouble here. Rubashov is one of the founding fathers of the Communist revolution and Stalin (referred to as No.1) has decided to remove him from power, as well as life. Rubashov is arrested and jailed. His interrogator turns out to be an old friend, Ivanov. After Ivanov is himself arrested, Rubashov falls into the clutches of Gletkin, a sadistic thug who eventually gets Rubashov to confess to crimes against the Party. Needless to say, the end is not pretty. In fact, the whole book is glum and rather depressing. Much of the book examines Rubashov's life in flashback. We see Rubashov dispatched to smooth over problems with local Commies, a meeting with a dissident Communist that ends badly for the dissident, and the sad relationship between Arlova and Rubashov. Arlova falls prey to execution because Rubashov sells her out to keep himself alive. Like I said, this is depressing stuff. There is also a fair amount of philosophical musings on Communism as well. Personally, I have little sympathy for a character like Rubashov. It was men such as him that killed hundreds of thousands when the Communist government came to power. Under Lenin, a terror unleashed on the upper class resulted in mass death, and confiscations of grain in the countryside caused even more mayhem. Stalinism, rearing its ugly head in the 1930's, was a logical progression of Leninism and its warped visions. Koestler shows us in sparse, unremittingly grim prose the end product of these horrors. I read this book fairly quickly. It is only a little over 200 pages long and is good for killing some time. A superficial knowledge of Russian Communism is helpful in understanding some of Koestler's references, although even this is not necessary to experience the terror in this book. This book was even put on the list of the 100 all-time greats of the 20th century. I can see why. Read and understand.
Rating:
Summary: No Such Thing as a 'True Political Perspective'
Review: Darkness at Noon convinces me that developing a true political perspective is impossible. We see the protagonist, Rubashov, a key figurehead of a state's socialist revolution, who ends up executed by his party. He sacrifices his entire life, individuality, and self-worth for party dogma and ideology. His former party, now in power, accuses him of being 'politically divergent,' of the party's interests; an accusation that is very far from the truth - the party's interests WAS Rubashov's interests, but not vice versa. Thus, a major theme of the novel is the question of means and ends. It outright rejects the notion that 'all ends justify all means.' To Rubashov, he believed in this notion to such an extent that he stood passively when his lover, Arlova, was accused and thereby executed for treason - by actively defending her, he would obstruct his party's socialist mission. However, Rubashov, like Trotsky, doctrinated humanitarian reason into party ideology (remember Khrushev's slogan?: Socialism with a human face!). On ideological grounds, he rightly denounced the party's program of 'vaccinating,' all peasants who decried the willful submission of giving up land. Rubashov knew that his party's ideology (socialism) could be rationalized and logically carried out by any reasoning, even when it meant genocide.
The truth, then, becomes a central issue that Rubashov painstainkingly deals with. Can truth be deducted by an all-encompassing and logically true ideology? Is it necessary to carry out all means to reach the end? Rubashov constantly shifts from the past and the present in order to tackle these questions. Finally, he realizes that he was all wrong. When the party tries him for treason, Rubashov is finally convinced that at the present, he is in fact treasonous, since he regrets his past fanatical loyalty to the party. The reader is left with a painful thought, how do I develop a political perspective without sacrificing humanity and truth? In this age of partisan politics, hidden information, citizen impotency, and rapid development, we are left with very little practical and human perspective. Many turn to ideology for perspective, a good way to make sense of the modern world. In all respects, Darkness at Noon near convinces me that it is almost near impossible to see the 'light' even at noon time.
|
