Darkness at Noon Literary Elements

Darkness at Noon Literary Elements

Genre

Russian Political Literature

Setting and Context

Moscow, 1938, during the Moscow Show Trials

Narrator and Point of View

Rubashov is the protagonist and everything that happens in the novel is from his point of view. He is representative of all of the Old Bolsheviks who are now threatened by the Communist regime.

Tone and Mood

Depressing and pessimistic; oppressive and threatening

Protagonist and Antagonist

Rubashov is the protagonist, the Stalinist regime the antagonists.

Major Conflict

The book takes place against a background of World War Two, so there is therefore conflict within Europe and within Russia in particular. The Moscow Show Trials which were anything but just and legal were taking place during the novel.

Climax

Rubashov confesses his "crimes" as alleged, but it is too late; he is executed.

Foreshadowing

Ivanov's death foreshadows the fact that Rubashov's confession will be meaningless, and not keep him from execution.

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

Koestler alludes to the real-life Moscow Trials that sent many members of the Communist Party to their deaths.

Imagery

The images painted are all very brutal but also demonstrate the way in which the Soviet regime deals in the "masses" more than the individual. Every image shows a mass of people, specifically being executed in public.

Paradox

Rubashov is being interrogated and brutalized in exactly the same way that he used to brutalize people and interrogate them.

Parallelism

There is a parallel in the book between the Communist regime and the Nazi one, in the way that they brutalize and slaughter enormous numbers of people.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The Old Bolsheviks represent the older members of the Communist party in Russia pre-Revolution,

Personification

N/A

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