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The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Totalitarian Novels: Loyalty and Confession in Darkness at Noon
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- [00:11]
A
Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I am Jeremiah Regan.
- [00:15]
B
And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back today with totalitarian novels. Lecture number six, darkness at noon, loyalty and confession.
- [00:23]
A
Yeah. So Dr. Arne gave us a plot summary and explored some of the themes of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon in our last lecture. Now we have a conversation with the students, and they ask some intelligent and interesting questions. I think we'll skip to their final question, which might be the most important. Why does Rubachev confess at his show trial to crimes that he knows he didn't commit?
- [00:45]
B
Which is very interesting. Like we've said before, in a previous course, we've talked about Solzhenitsyn in the work that he did with the Gulag Archipelago. And he actually also brings up this question in his writings. He says, why do people confess to crimes that they don't commit? And there is an amount of tyranny that is brought up to people where they get to a point that they just simply confess. And in fact, Solzhenitsyn recount a time when he heard some Russian soldiers speaking and actually mocking Nazi soldiers for having allowed somebody to leave a confession room without confessing to a crime they didn't commit.
- [01:33]
A
This is not a new phenomena either. Socrates decides to confess to his crimes and accept his punishment. And he gives us, through Plato and through Xenophon, long accounts of why he made the decision he did. But one of the things Xenophon especially brings out is there's no way out for Socrates. He is old. He has nowhere to go. Even if he tried a daring escape, he wouldn't be accepted anywhere else. And you think some of these factors have to weigh in on a character like Rubachev. He knows he's been a party member since its inception. He knows there's no way out. And so why not accept the punishment of his party, which upholds the legitimacy of his party, the legitimacy of the thing to which he's devoted his entire life? There's kind of a resignation in it. No other option, of course, but also, hey, at least I can go out, and it means my life's work was consistent, which is a tragedy in its way. So Rubachev, both because he has no other viable option and because he doesn't want to devalue or disparage the thing he's devoted his life to, accepts the punishment, even though in his clearer moments, he knows it's unjust. It takes a very special person like a Solzhenitsyn to resist that type of temptation and to fight for justice instead of for the party and its power. And you mentioned we talk about this in another course.
- [02:52]
B
That's right, we talk about this in our course Marxism, Socialism and Communism. We've done that course in the podcast before. But if you have recently joined us here in our podcast, you should go check out that course. It's Marxism, Socialism and Communism. You can go to Hillsdale Edu course that's Hillsdale Edu course to sign up for Marxism, Socialism and Communism. It is a six part documentary that we've done on the course with several different Hillsdale professors that speak about the different parts of this ideologies and essentially how pernicious they are and how they always lead to misery and destruction.
- [03:36]
A
It works really well as a podcast and I, I believe this about all of our courses, but this one in particular is very enjoyable to watch. It's our first purpose built documentary. So if you have the chance to sit down and watch it, in addition to listening to it, I'd encourage you to do that.
- [03:51]
B
Now let's turn back to totalitarian novels. Lecture 6 Darkness at Noon Loyalty and Confession.
- [04:05]
C
Welcome back to this course on totalitarian novels. We're going to have a discussion of Darkness at Noon. That's the third of the novels that we have read. Addie has a big disagreement with me about Rubeshoff and so we're going to explore that and I'm asking her to begin. What is the deal about Rubachev?
- [04:26]
D
I think Rubachev is completely contemptible as a figure. I think he is a man who dedicated his life to this militant philosophy in which he tried to exert power and his frame of the world on people and murdered several directly and several and millions indirectly through his beliefs. And I think that that eventually led to his own fall within the party because his beliefs only had one end and, and at the end he realizes, oh, maybe this isn't exactly what I wanted it to be. And he starts to feel remorse over the deaths that he's caused. And I don't think that we should pity him or feel empathy for him at the end because he is dying.
- [05:06]
E
At the sword that he created.
- [05:08]
D
And I think that that is poetically just.
- [05:10]
F
I'm not sure I fully agree with that. I appreciate his desire for consistency even if he doesn't always achieve that desire. And if perhaps he's consistently Ron in some ways I respect the fact that he's courageous and how he responds to Glenkin's interrogation. I think with a good bit of.
- [05:32]
D
Courage is Being consistent in evil, though, and wrongness, something to be praised. Is that courage, or is it folly? Is it recklessness?
- [05:43]
F
I think that's a fair point. I think there is something, though, in persistence and in. And trying to be consistent even if you're in error, that is admirable.
- [05:56]
C
Do you think Koestler, the author, wishes us to see good things in Rubachev?
- [06:05]
D
I don't think so. I think he presents us the interior man's thoughts as a way of examining them and realizing how contemptible they are. So that we take from that a lesson of this is what human beings are capable of. And I do think that with the oceanic feeling and things like that, there are glimmers of, okay, there's a different route for humanity. But I think that within Rubachev, it's too late. It's as much as certainly too late. It's contemptible.
- [06:32]
C
But first of all, this is not all a deathbed confession in Rubachev. He's been growing troubled for years, right? And he's had these sympathetic conversations with others of the old Bolsheviks. A doubt has grown among them. And the purpose of the novel is not to idolize Riboshov, but you're to see that he's a man of considerable quality. He's brave, he's resolute. And see, it's the perversion of those. I mean, first of all, I don't think that you're meant to sympathize with him. We get to see a picture of a man struggling to get out, and he can't get out. It's not just that Gledkin won't let him out. That's true. It's also that he uses the way Rubeshov has lived his life to destroy him. And Rubachev is presented as a human being, you know, even Gletkin a little bit. By the way, when Rubeshov begins to confess, Gladkin explained, first of all, every time Rubeshoff confesses something, he turns the intensity of the light down. And Rubichev comments to himself, he pays in cash. I kind of like that. It's a kind of mastery he's established over Rubachev. But then at one point, Gladkin stops and explains something to him. This admiral who whimpers, who's killed. He's killed because he's not identified with the. The battleship. He was an advocate for big submarines, ocean going to go fight. But Stalin saw we needed little submarines to defend the coast. In other words, socialism in one country. And Gledkin understands the point and explains it to Rubachev. And that means that he's thinking too, right? These are not robots, although they have destroyed themselves. I mean, you know, one of the lessons here, if you believe in freedom, human freedom, which I happen to do, you work your way around reading the best books, in my opinion, to understanding that we make ourselves and we have. Aristotle claims in the Ethics that we all have an opportunity to do that. Only the most distorted peoples in their upbringing actually don't know when they're making their choices and for years what the right thing to do would be. He claims that we have this understanding of the good. It's actually how we're able to talk and that choices come to us and there'll be something we want and something outside that that says you should or should not have it. Do you listen to that voice? And the process of becoming a vicious person is whether you do that or not. It's in your choices, he said, not your actions that form your character. Character is a big word, right? It means etch or engrave. It gets carved into you. And then he says that most of us don't really form a definitely strong character. We sort of lean toward the good side, but we blow with the wind a bit. But remarkable people, people who are very resolute, they turn themselves into virtuous people or vicious people. Now these are resolute people, all of them. Everybody in this novel is a tyrant. To some extent. It is the doubts of Rubachev that make him interesting, right? He's not a Neanderthal. He's still a human, right? And it's a struggle. He has to get out. By the time he meets Richard and little Loe and Arlova, he's done so many terrible things that he can regret consigning them to death. He can't not do it. And then he did the same thing to himself. So the reason he's a sympathetic character relative to the ones around him, I believe, is because of those doubts. He's got it coming. You're right. If you become a judge, remind me not to get in front of you. Definite moral sense has this adage, and that's good, that's good. But, you know, if you. In the panoply of the novel, remember, this is a novel about a group of people who are the most destructive people in human history. And they're all in that, right? And so Mother Teresa is not in here. That's true. Jack, what have you got to say?
- [12:09]
G
I want to take an excerpt from the beginning of the book. He had often looked at the color print of Number One hanging over his bed and tried to hate it. They had between themselves given him many names, but in the end, it was Number One that stuck. The horror which Number One emanated above all consisted in the possibility that he was in the right and that all those whom he killed had to admit, even with the bullet in the back of their necks, that he conceivably might be in the right. There was no certainty, only the appeal to that mocking oracle they called history, who gave her sentence only when the jaws of the appealer had long since fallen to dust. I'd like. If you could, I'd like you to compare number one to Big Brother, whom we encountered in 1984.
- [12:55]
C
Yeah. So O' Brien might be better, because O' Brien personifies Big Brother in 1984. And it might be interesting to compare O' Brien and Rubachoff. Let me convert your question into something else, because Rubeshov and o' Brien are the ones we're told a lot about. Not so much about Number One. Right. Just like not so much about Big Brother. Does he exist? O' Brien says about Big Brother, and he replies, he's the Party. He's all of us. Right. Well, that comparison in O'. Brien. And see, I think the artfulness of 1984 is an exaggeration, which is one thing poets do. I'm using poetry in the very broad sense. Everything contrived in writing, the way Aristotle talked of poetry, what he does is he takes it. And he, the Party itself. And Big Brother, in the person of o', Brien, he simply purifies them. O' Brien is untroubled. O' Brien is rigid. O' Brien is untouchable. He's a little bit like Mustafa Bond, who's also untouchable, although playful. And Rubachev is a different examination of the same human type, because now it is a human type. He's not just a machine. He's not just. I mean, o' Brien had obliterated himself as he obliterated Winston and everyone else. Rubachev has not achieved that. In fact, no one ever achieves that. I don't believe, first of all, Gledkin, who's a Neanderthal, he's still human. He still explains. He still feels the triumph of his mastery of Rubachev, remembering that the mastery of Rubachev is made possible by Rubachev's past, by the things he's done. He's guilty. Not to save our Lova and to save himself would be contemptible. And so he doesn't you've demanded the sacrifice of so many. Must you not make it yourself? And he does. He's caught. Is it Lady Macbeth who says this? Even handed justice commends the contents of the poisoned chalice to our own lips? Maybe it's Macbeth. I forget. So in Rubeshoff, it's more human. It results. I mean, two Richard, the first of the tragedies that Rubeshoff executes him effectively leaves him to be executed. To Richard, Rubachev looks like o'. Brien. He's not sympathetic. We know internally, because that's the power of the. The author of the novelist. We know what Rubachev is thinking, and we know that he's not untroubled by this. We don't know that about o'. Brien. He never. We know about o', Brien, by the way, that he understands Winston with almost a godlike power. And he understands him so well that he can tempt him into his torture. So he's aware, but he doesn't show anywhere. I can remember. He doesn't show any doubt or weakness of any kind. But that's unreal. I mean, we know about Stalin. Stalin was extremely. You know, he's maybe. He's got to be one of the most devious people who ever lived. He kind of makes mincemeat out of Adolf Hitler. Here's a tricky thing. He did Hitler, and he agreed to carve up Poland between them. The German army goes. Soviet army waits, lets the German army do most of the fighting, right? And Hitler felt betrayed. He's an arch betrayer. He was betrayed. And then he turned on Stalin. He betrayed him back. And that's when Stalin joined the Western Allies, right? Well, there's a society where you're talking about a panoply of people in which wickedness is taken to an extreme, and yet there are degrees of it. Solzhenitsyn at least claims in the first circle that Stalin was personally cowardly. I mean, he had nerves of iron. Kill all these guys, get them all arrested. Maneuver the way he did. They lived in terror of him, and they wanted to kill him. He killed them instead. So, first of all, these are people who live their lives like that. The manners of Washington, D.C. are different than the manners of Hillsdale, Michigan. People are good at. People are good at power in that place, you know, and they wouldn't be there if there weren't. And there are very decent ones among them, and there are many who are not so decent, but they all have an eye for power. I mean, the ones who get somewhere serious. It's remarkable.
- [19:04]
D
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale. Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find find your audio.
- [19:49]
C
This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hillsdale. Eduardo that's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts Spotify or YouTube and Katie has something to say.
- [20:35]
E
So my question comes kind of from the end of the book, near right before the third interrogation, which maybe could go back to what we were talking about with if Robashov is somebody we can learn from. But in his diary he writes, the historical mistake of socialist theory was to believe that mass consciousness rises at a constant and consistent rate. And then he goes on to say, we believe that aligning the worldview of the masses to the changed reality was a simple process, the course of which we measured in years, whereas history teaches that a measure of centuries would be more appropriate. And so I guess my question is, is that true? Do the masses take that long to mature to an ideology, or does it come on faster than they think it does?
- [21:19]
C
No, isn't. So you look toward the back of the book. Is that from Rubachoff's period where he's writing a corrective to the historical dialectic? Is that what that's from? And see, that's him being trapped, right? You know, Lord, artificial intelligence is dawning or has dawned upon us now, and God knows what we're going to get. But there is this interest in manipulating people. People. And you know, first of all, remember to talk of the masses, the word masses is almost always a bad word. In Winston Churchill, he wrote an essay called Mass Effects in Modern Life. He didn't like them. He wanted people to grow. And the growth of a person happens in the Person, chiefly, and they need help. You know, in the experience of Hillsdale College, that means that what's happened to you, mainly, you have done that. I think it's natural for you to do it and want to do it. I don't think we gave you that. I think every human has it. You have a lot of it and an ability for it. And this is a setting where you can grow and help others to grow. Right. So that's the way I think things unfold in the world. What they think is he still. He's repenting. Eddie's point is, he got what's coming to him. Good. And my point is, he's struggling to get out. And what you just read is evidence that he can't see. In the end, by the way, when he has a moment, has a few days where he thinks he's gonna get to go on, all he's doing is getting ready to try again, you see? Same thing. It'll be the same cruelties over again. Because he's so worried. No, he's so devoted to affecting the masses. And that's how he thinks of them, you see? But they're not masses. They're people. And you know, the glory of the American Revolution is that the reason we may not be governed except by our consent and under forms that make that consent effective is because we are people. We are not masses.
- [24:19]
F
See, I want to take us to the end. But when he asked himself, for what actually, are you dying? He found no answer. It was a mistake in the system. Perhaps it lay in the precept, which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed in the precept that the end justifies the means. Do you think he's correct, that that is the core of where the party went wrong?
- [24:47]
C
Well, they only got two things wrong. The end and the means. See, I mean, first of all, it's an obvious point that what justifies means is ends. But if only it were that simple, right? Because you learn in the rich understanding of human life that's presented in certain classic philosophers and in the founders of America, too. They understood this. You all have ends. And you're developing your capacity, you're far along now, to pursue those ends through your life. Jack here is going to law school. Did you notice that in this session? Jack has not used a Latin term yet. And the reason is, it's been ridiculed out of him. His education continues through this, and he's going to practice law unless he's not. Who knows what's going to come up? Our end is to go to heaven and do good. Those look to me like unalterable rules. I don't know of any others. I think the root depends a bunch on what you encounter, right? And that's one reason I don't like rules in the college. In the end, the rules, when you try to look for an unalterable rule, it always turns out be good. That's one. And you know that's the one rule you can remember, so you don't. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to reduce the society. First of all, they have a theory. And the word theory comes from the word theater. Whether it's cognate with the word for theater. It's something you watch, right? And they take this theory of human action and they set out to impose it. But human action is variable. He's looking for new rules because the old ones didn't work. Of course they didn't work. And even the ends that you pursue will vary some with the circumstances you encounter. And that means ends and means don't live. They do live in a relationship of subordinate and superordinate. But they have a funny way of taking turns too. One time somebody said to me in a discussion, what we gonna do about something? And the hard ones are always, you don't really know what to do. And this person challenged me, said, you always say you do the right thing. Isn't it clear what the right thing is here? And I say kind of clear. But if the result of our doing that thing, which we don't necessarily have to do anything right now, would be that the next day the college would be destroyed, that'd be kind of a high price to pay for that right thing, wouldn't it? Would it be worth it? So one of my practices I don't like rule, is I try not to make really difficult decisions until I have to, because I always think, maybe I'll know more tomorrow or it'll go away anyway. See, that means that this rigid relationship between means and ends is not in fact how things work in nature because of our situation in nature. Okay, I'm going to read something. This is Rubachev's confession. He's given his testimony. Everybody in the room is looking at him with hostility. That's the thing to know about tyranny, by the way, Solzhenitsyn writes a lot about this. Nobody trusts the regime. Everybody knows it's unjust and still it's shameful. To be arrested. And people seem to shun you for more than the reason that you seem to be dangerous now. Citizen President, he says, I speak here for the last time in my life. The opposition is beaten and destroyed. I ask myself today, for what am I dying? I am confronted by absolute nothingness. There is nothing for which one could die if one died without having repented. And unreconciled with the party and the movement. You see, he's disappeared. Now there's only those things. Therefore, on the threshold of my last hour, I bend my knees to the country, to the masses and to the whole people. I don't know the distinction between the masses and the whole people. The political masquerade, the mummery of discussions and conspiracy are over. We were politically dead long before the citizen prosecutor demanded our heads. Woe unto the defeated whom history treads into the dust. Remember this idea. Whether a thing is right or not cannot depend upon whether it is successful. By some ordinary standard. Achieving the right desired result cannot be the whole story. Let's say that you are called upon to murder somebody. Murder? That means wrongful homicide. If it's not murder, it's not wrongful. Right. You can, on the order in an army, for example, kill somebody. But a murder, in order to prevent some greater evil, well, you'd have to know a very great deal to think that that would be right. And whatever you knew would have to be so certain that it wouldn't be murder anymore, right? And that means it's not just the consequences. Aristotle even says there are things that you will have to do. That in the abstract, you wish you would not have to do. Think them wrong in other circumstances. One of the safeguards is you have to hate the doing of it. You have to have your soul in such an order that it scars you to do it. That's why soldiers who, like killing, are suspect. History treads into the dust. I have only one justification before you citizen judges. I did not make it easy for myself. This appeases Addie, who likes him to suffer vanity and the last remains of pride whispered to me. Die in silence, say nothing. Or die with a noble gesture. With a moving swan song on your lips. Pour out your heart and challenge your accusers. That would have been easy for an old rebel. But I overcame the temptation. Isn't that interesting? With that, my task is ended. I have paid my account with history. And see, that means his own history, too, is settled. To ask you for mercy would be derision. I have nothing more to say. That's what he's brought to. That's the thing the book's trying to explain now. What do you guys think about that?
- [32:20]
D
I still just think that even within that, he's playing into the Party. And even though he does struggle, and I do think that we see his humanity in this struggle, I just find it almost worse because he does know he's doing the wrong thing. And he continues to do the wrong thing and not make a change. And so in this moment where he's, like, I was tempted to either denounce the Party or stay silent, instead, he's giving the Party what it wants still and allowing it to continue.
- [32:49]
C
Right. That's true. He certainly lost. And so you're saying that to redeem himself, he should have refused the confession. He should have used the occasion to denounce the Party, which, by the way, one or two did. And then they were brought back a few days later and they recanted. Stuff was done to them. But you're saying a real conversion, he would have defied them to the end. Yes, I agree with that. It's just that you miss the point of the book. If you don't see what he had to overcome, like in O' Brien in 1984, you don't get to see that right here. You get to see that he had to eliminate his remaining humanity. But his remaining humanity is the thing that makes him sympathetic relative to others, although in the end, not sympathetic. See, if Addie had her way, he should have been interrupted in the middle of this and given a root canal. And then they could shoot him later. Hard judge. Okay, what do you guys think?
- [34:15]
F
I agree with Adi to some extent that he feels a lot of guilt from Arlova and Little Louie and Richard. And I think that his standing firm and holding on to kind of this part, what the Party wants against his own desires, it seems to be. It seems to be his kind of penance for the guilt that he feels.
- [34:38]
D
I just think that's a strange way of showing penance by falling. By eradicating the last bits of your humanity.
- [34:47]
F
And I think he's wrong in this. I think he shouldn't. I think he should have gone on one long speech about why the Party's wrong. If he were a stronger man, perhaps he would have. I just think this is why he did it.
- [34:59]
C
By the way, do you know who successfully showed penance? Arthur Kirschler. He joined this cause. He wrote this powerful and, you know, at some risk to his life, Whitaker Chambers. Another one. We don't read him here, but it's worth reading him Orwell. Right. And in a way, you could say that what this book is, is Koestler explaining why they did what they did in the mind of a man who regretted things he'd done. Right. But he was trapped. And I think that's the part that you have to read your Aristotle to understand it. You can ruin yourself. And these people did, even the ones who had doubts he was caught. What would you add to that?
- [35:59]
E
I agree that I think he was caught. And I don't know that he necessarily, like, thinks the Party's wrong. Like, I think that he believed so strongly, kind of going back to Luke's point about consistency, he believed in what he did, even if he's angry, upset, that he's now on the out. But I think that he had already made his choice a long time ago. And that, yes, there's this humanity that we see, and it's frustrating because we want him to be noble, but he doesn't want that. He wants to remain consistent with the Party. And to do that requires him to give up his humanity. So he doesn't go after these nobler aims. He decides to stay true to the Party. And so maybe you were right with the consistency thing, even if that makes us angry.
- [36:44]
C
So for Jack says something wise. I just thought of another executed defender, Socrates. Have you read the story in the three dialogues at the end about Socrates? End, he too dies with loyalty to the regime on his lips. He refuses to get away, but in the end, his devotion is to the truth, and that's humanizing. He won't run away and he won't say a thing that he thinks is false. I think Socrates is a preferable character to Rubachev.
- [37:28]
D
I agree.
- [37:31]
C
Jack.
- [37:33]
G
I think Caitlin makes an excellent point where she highlights Rubachev's overarching, overriding loyalty to the Party. And that theme, to me, is pretty consistent throughout. I mean, even, it seemed to me, when he was rewriting the history or trying to justify things, when he was wrestling with all of his past deeds, it was always. It always tended towards putting the Party in the most favorable light possible, in light of the contradictions that he had to deal with. And so for me, it seemed to me that this conclusion, exemplified by that quote, seemed to be a sort of fulfillment of what was going on, because it seems the Party wanted him to do this. Inevitably, the Party is infallible. It should get its way. And even though he has to be sacrificed to history, this cold, unfeeling, rigid subject that we constantly encounter throughout this book. That's his way of doing it.
- [38:33]
C
Churchill says a pretty thing that's of comfort to me sometimes, especially lately. He says a spark coming from God knows where can set people moving in an entirely different direction. I think we should be grateful to Arthur Koestler, even if he's not cruel enough to his protagonist, because this is a rare chance to get inside. I think it is the most destructive movement in human history, and it carries on to this day. What are the people like inside it? What are they? You know, they're human beings. How'd they do this? Thank you for watching. Thank you, all of you. Good work.
- [39:40]
B
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