Missions Resources - Bibliography
Darkness at Noon
Authors: Arthur Koestler
ISBN: 1416540261
Publisher: Scribner
Number of pages: 288
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
Steve Hawthorne discusses this novel in an essay in Jack Voelkel's Great Cloud of Witnesses column.
Rubashov, a leader of the Communist Party since the revolution, no longer agrees with the direction the Party has taken. Reflecting on the options open to the opposition, he sees only three alternatives: to seize power by a coup d’etat; to give up and die in silence; or to continue living as a cog in the system, denying and suppressing his own convictions when there is no prospect of materializing them.
I resonate with Rubashov’s dilemma. I became a missionary doctor because I wanted to make a difference. That means changing things from the way they presently are, which implies not being satisfied with the status quo, which puts me in the “opposition.” I am opposed to cancer, to alcoholism, to family violence, to a local school system that wastes the children’s potential, to a local church more concerned with rules than with the power of God, to a government health care system that values party loyalty over competence.
I’ve considered Rubashov’s options: getting violently angry and attacking the miscreants causing the problems; leaving Bolivia; or staying on but giving up the struggle of swimming upstream and just drifting with the current. None of them appeal, and feeling chronically dissatisfied can breed an ugly, critical spirit in me. What alternatives are there between open war and sullen withdrawal?
Click here for the rest of Steve Hawthorne's article.
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