History Literature / DarknessAtNoon

Sidney Kingsley adapted the novel into a Broadway play in 1951 starring Claude Rains, who won a Tony Award for playing Rubashov.

In prison, Rubashov is interrogated by two men: Ivanov, an old friend from Revolutionary days, and Gletkin, a fanatical young Party member who has far less memory of life before the Revolution. Rubashov is offered the choice of an administrative trial or public trial. This means either die in silence, or confess in a show trial to criminal activities which he did not commit. As he ponders which course of action is more honorable, he reflects on his past life, which he had dedicated to the service of the Party and thinks about the immoral things he has done in the name of a better future.

In prison, Rubashov is interrogated by two men: Ivanov, an old friend from Revolutionary days, and Gletkin, a fanatical young Party member who has barely any memory of life before the Revolution. Rubashov is offered the choice of an administrative trial or public trial. This means either die in silence, or confess in a show trial to criminal activities which he did not commit. As he ponders which course of action is more honorable, he reflects on his past life, which he had dedicated to the service of the Party and thinks about the immoral things he has done in the name of a better future.

In prison, Rubashov is interrogated by two men: Ivanov, an old friend from the Revolutionary days, and Gletkin, a fanatical young Communist who has barely any memory of life before the Revolution. Rubashov is offered the choice of an administrative trial or public trial. This means either die in silence, or confess in a show trial to criminal activities which he did not commit. As he ponders which course of action is more honorable, he reflects on his past life, which he had dedicated to the service of the Party and thinks about the immoral things he has done in the name of a better future.

The protagonist is Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, a veteran of the Revolution. He was one of the delegates to the first congress of the Party, captured in a photograph that used to hang on many walls. Of the bearded heads numbered in that photograph, only "No. 1" and his belated predecessor still remain in the Party's favor; the rest are being liquidated one by one.

Rubashov had been in jail many times before, and even dreamed of being woken up and arrested in the middle of the night, but he did not dream that it would be the People's Commissariat of the Interior who would be arresting him. In prison, he is offered the choice of an administrative trial or public trial. This means either die in silence, or confess in a show trial to criminal activities which he did not commit. As he ponders which course of action is more honorable, he reflects on his past life, which he had dedicated to the service of the Party and thinks about the immoral things he has done in the name of a better future.

* NotSoDifferent: Ivanov tells Rubashov that their positions could easily have been reversed, and Rubashov admits to himself that, because they shared the same philosophy, if he had been interrogating Ivanov he would have brought the same arguments against him. This is one likely reason why Ivanov is also arrested and shot before Rubashov.

* TortureAlwaysWorks: Gletkin is a firm believer in this, stating "Human beings able to resist any amount of physical pressure do not exist." Ivanov brings up that during the Civil War, Gletkin was captured by the enemy, and they tied a lighted candlewick on to his shaven skull, but he didn't confess. Gletkin counters that this was only because they didn't have enough time to torture him, as he was rescued a few hours later.

Rubashov had been in jail many times before, and even dreamed of being woken up and arrested in the middle of the night, but he did not dream that it would be the People's Commisariat of the Interior who would be arresting him. In prison, he is offered the choice of an administrative trial or public trial. This means either die in silence, or confess in a show trial to criminal activities which he did not commit. As he ponders which course of action is more honorable, he reflects on his past life, which he had dedicated to the service of the Party and thinks about the immoral things he has done in the name of a better future.

* UsefulNotes/NaziGermany: Never explicitly called that, but the country is referred to several times throughout the novel. The year 1933 is frequently mentioned in conjunction with it; 1933 was the year Hitler became chancellor.

* WithUsOrAgainstUs: Rubashov recalls having enforced the principle that not to be absolutely with the Party was to be against the Revolution, and realizes he is doomed by that same principle now that the Party has decided to destroy him.

''Darkness at Noon'' is a 1940 novel by Arthur Koestler. The story is set in the Soviet Union during JosephStalin's Great Purge in the 1930s. None of this is identified explicitly; the country is only referred as "the Country of the Revolution", the Communist Party as "The Party" and Stalin as "Number One". Koestler, who used to be a Communist, expressed his disillusionment with the movement through the novel. ''Darkness at Noon'' is considered to be one of the most influential anti-Soviet books ever written.

* DoomedMoralVictor: Averted strongly. [[spoiler:Rubashov is not and has never been a hero; he has actually done things just as bad or worse than what is being done to him to others when the party demanded it. He has no code of morality to which he can truly appeal beyond the will of the party, and the party now demands that he die for crimes he didn't commit, so this is what he does. This sets him apart from the officer in the neighboring cell, who belongs to a pre-revolutionary code.]]

* FromACertainPointOfView: From a certain point of view, the charges brought up against Rubashov were true; for instance he did talk about plans of removing Number One by violence, or handing over a strategic territory to an enemy country. But nothing would have ever came of it, because the old generation was too tired, too worn out to actually do anything: "the whole activity of the so-called opposition had been senile chatter". But Rubashov can't explain this to Gletkin. However, when he's accused with something that isn't true from any point of view - committing sabotage in the aluminum trust he led - he manages to convince Gletkin to drop the charge.

* TortureAlwaysWorks: Gletkin is a firm believer of this, stating "Human beings able to resist any amount of physical pressure do not exist." Ivanov brings up that during the Civil War, Gletkin was captured by the enemy, and they tied a lighted candlewick on to his shaven skull, but he didn't confess. Gletkin counters that this was only because they didn't have enough time to torture him, as he was rescued a few hours later.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Ivanov uses this as an excuse for the ReignOfTerror:
-->"Every year several million people are killed quite pointlessly by epidemics and other natural catastrophes. And we should shrink from sacrificing a few hundred thousand for the most promising experiment in history? Not to mention the legions of those who die of undernourishment and tuberculosis in coal and quicksilver mines, rice-fields and cotton plantations. No one takes any notice of them; nobody asks why or what for; but if here we shoot a few thousand objectively harmful people, the humanitarians all over the world foam at the mouth."

* FromACertainPointOfView: From a certain point of view, the charges brought up against Rubashov were true; for instance he did talk about plans of removing Number One by violence, or handing over a strategic territory to an enemy country. But nothing would have ever came of it, because the old generation was too tired, too worn out to actually do anything: "the whole activity of the so-called opposition had been senile chatter". But Rubashov can't explain this to Gletkin. When he's accused with something that isn't true from any point of view - committing sabotage in the aluminum trust he led - he manages to convince Gletkin to drop the charge.

* AsTheGoodBookSays: Wassilij, the porter of the house Rubashov lived in, and a veteran of his regiment in the Civil War keeps a Bible hidden in a hole in his mattress until his daughter finds it and throws it away. He can still quote passages from it by heart. The newspaper account of Rubashov's trial reminds him of the mockery of Jesus by the Roman soldiers.

-->'''No. 402:''' Honor is to live and die for one's belief.

* TotalitarianUtilitarian: The philosophy of the revolution in a nutshell. Ivanov at one point notes that countless people die of starvation or disease every year, so he sees no reason why the party should shed any tears over the need to exterminate a few million 'objectively harmful' people if it helps create a better world for those who survive.

* StartXToStopX: According to Ivanov, the Party must become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, has to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered and to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped.

* TortureAlwaysWorks: Gletkin is a firm believer of this, stating "Human beings able to resist any amount of physical pressure do not exist." Ivanov mentions that during the Civil War, Gletkin was captured by the enemy, and they tied a lighted candlewick on to his shaven skull, but he didn't confess. Gletkin counters that this was only because they didn't have enough time to torture him, as he was rescued a few hours later.