Tony’s Comments (group member since Oct 11, 2012)

Tony’s comments from the Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group group.

Brian,

I would definitely agree that Darkness at Noon could be classified as a dystopian novel. I don't feel that a dystopia has to be built on large-scale world building in order to qualify for the label.

According to dictionary.com the definition of the word dystopia is:
"a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding."

I believe that Darkness at Noon meets this definition thoroughly. After all, it details Rubashov's meanderings through his own memory on how Revolutionary Russia got to the miserable situation it is in. Even in the final act, Rubashov has to confront the specter of the world he helped create when his interrogation is taken over by Gletkin, a staunch and inflexible Communist.

Even with that aside, Darkness at Noon was one of the major influences for Orwell's 1984. Orwell's novel seems mostly to be a prophecy based on the information provided by Koestler.

Finally, Darkness at Noon makes no bones about the Bolshevik ties to Jacobin political thought from the French Revolution. With chapter introduction quotes from the likes of St. Just, the novel turns the reader's mind to the utopia that the Jacobins hoped to bring about in Revolutionary France. This is much the same utopia that the socialists like Rubashov hoped to bring about in Russia. This story details the breaking of that utopian ideal.

So, in short, I would certainly feel comfortable describing Darkness at Noon as a dystopian themed book.

Like many others in this group, it seems as though 1984 initially piqued my dystopian interest. However, that book alone, as good as it is, wasn't enough to send me hunting down the genre. That honor would have to go to Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Aldous Huxley. Without either of these authors' works I'm not sure that I would be in the same literary place that I am in now.

I love dystopian novels and stories for the critique on society that they endeavor to be. Like literary science fiction, dystopian stories allow the author to examine a facet of the current culture under a microscope. By hyperbolizing the issue and making it all-encompassing, the author can explore the fallacies and problems within our own status quo.