A Powerful Picture
Koestler vividly describes the paranoid atmosphere of Stalin's Russia - the physical and psychological torture and the many imprisoned or executed on trumped-up charges. Beyond this, Koestler powerfully portrays the emptiness of a life dedicated to pursuing Communist utopia within a secular worldview in which any means are justified to pursue these utopian dreams.
Koestler also contrast a government based on the ideal of the value of each individual, rooted in Christianity, versus a secular government able to justify treating individuals as expendable, especially in this passage: "There are only two conceptions of human ethics and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated to the community -- which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb."
An Important Book
This novel is an inside look at the Communist Party in the 1930s, during the Purges and the rise of Fascism in Europe. Koestler is very subtle in his writing, weaving in religious images which reinforces the idea of the Party as a replacement religion for the Left, with Stalin as its Pope, the promised Socialist utopia as heaven and being thrown out of the Party as excommunication. The book looks at the logic of the protagonist's mind as he looks at the mechanism that the Communist Party became, a creaking bureaucratic machine which crushed the individual.
A great book. It should be required reading in High School.
More important than ever
Darkness at Noon is a beautifully clear, if grim, reminder of the importance of keeping human individuality, with all its inconveniences, sacred in any political or religious system of belief. It should be required reading, especially in an era like ours, where so much of our time and attention is focused on entertainment or on partisan exchanges, instead of the development of the foundations of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
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