receive King Haakon’s medal, he was asked on several occasions how he knew so well what the resistance there was doing. His answer was, “I put myself in your place and thought what I would do.” That reply explains more than the success of The Moon Is Down in occupied Europe; it reminds us what readers of Steinbeck all over the world had already recognized as among the writer’s major attributes: his sure sense of audience, and his empathy with the oppressed. European partisans who ran considerable risk to publish and distribute The Moon Is Down
