The Moon Is Down

I had to check another version of the book to read the missing pages. Please check the books before you send them, and make sure there are no pages that have been stripped.

First of all, this is a great book, and I hope you can find some time to read it. I vehemently disagree with the characterization of Mayor Orden in the review made by the anonymous reviewer, "a reader." In this review, Mayor Orden is characterized as a coward. The reader contends that Mayor Orden did nothing to help either side and his final decisions were made for himself. Then the reader goes on espousing the virtues of democracy, informing us that democratic rulers carry on the will of the people. Well, perhaps "a reader" needed to read this book more carefully. Mayor Orden gives his life for democracy. He says in the beginning of the book that he, as mayor, IS the people. That is, he is the WILL of the people. His self-sacrifice serves as an example to his constituency; he's telling them in the good old American-Steinbeck tradition to resist totalitarianism, even if it means death. He knows his death will provide another martyr for the resistance, thus undermining the Nazis. He knows that the will of the people is resistance. He would only betray them if he had chosen to save himself and try to impose the will of the Nazi Colonel on the town. In short, Mayor Orden = Nathan Hale. I hope people actually read these books before they review them. There are some items in the aforementioned review that make me question whether or not we read the same book.

John Steinbeck is a masterful writer with a keen eye to see divergent perspectives of the world. This book may strike Steinbeck fans as being odd because it is not his typical set of early 20th Century California. Despite this jaunt from his comfort zone, I would go so far as to say this is my second favorite Steinbeck book. The Moon is Down tells the tale of a Norwegian town conquered by the Nazis. Despite the advantage that the conquering Nazis have, they are never able to gain the love or admiration that they expect from the people. This troubles the Nazi soldiers, particularly when the townspeople begin to retaliate against the Nazis. What immediately strikes me reading this book in 2004 is the book parallels with the situation in Iraq. I am certainly NOT comparing American soldiers to Nazis. The idea that a country does not like foreigners occupying their country, no matter how justified the invaders might be, is true. The plot eventually digresses into a question of how the Nazis can control the townspeople. The Nazis are less confident of winning the war and only want to survive. As the reader would suspect, the Nazis resort to drastic means. Steinbeck certainly captures a unique view of war in The Moon is Down. The value of this book in terms of its political and historical commentary makes it a compelling read.

In an unnamed country (similar to Norway) during World War II, a German sympathizer lures local men and the town's twelve soldiers into the forest long enough for the Germans to take the town. They occupy the home of the mayor as a sign of their power and commandeer the local coal mine. Mayor Orden has never before been a brave or very forceful man, but he is not a fool, and while he tries to keep order in the town, as the Germans demand, he refuses to use the power of his office to betray the ideals of his people. Soon the locals begin to sabotage everything the Germans can use to prolong the war.The narrative is dramatic, full of conversation and containing minimal description, which gives it the feeling of a simple morality tale. Steinbeck depicts the German soldiers, at first, as almost bumbling--organized, to be sure, but basically human, showing footsoldiers getting homesick, seeking understanding of the orders they must fulfill, complaining about the weather, and wondering if their mail will arrive on time. Gradually, as Berlin exerts more and more pressure to take out the coal, the German occupiers must impose more drastic measures. Local resistance becomes more violent in response: soldiers disappear and are found dead in snowbanks, small explosions blow up rail lines, and the miners have "accidents" which prevent the coal from being removed. Even the arrest of Mayor Orden and Doctor Winter cannot force the citizens to give in to tyranny.Though the novel was published in 1942 expressly for "propaganda" in Europe's occupied countries (where it was quickly translated and disseminated secretly), it is a good story which transcends its original purpose and, as a result, it continues to find an audience. The depiction of the Germans as ordinary but flawed humans--"herd men who win the battles"--rather than as terrifying monsters, makes their defeat seem possible. Depicting the townspeople as resourceful but ordinary--"free men who win the wars"--rather than as heroes, makes their resistance seem a natural, and victory seem possible. Though the characters are shallow, Mayor Orden does grow and change, and his references to Plato's defense of Aristotle in a crucial conversation with Doctor Winter put the relationship of the individual to authority into a wider context. Simple, direct, concise, and humane, this may be the most effective piece of mass propaganda ever written. Mary Whipple

The Moon is Down is not the most well-known of Steinbeck works, probably in part due to its unusual genesis, but it is a remarkably stirring work. Written as anti-German propaganda in 1942, it was by far the most successful work of Allied propaganda, with hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation in many different languages (despite Axis attempts to suppress it). As propaganda, the work was criticized as being too easy on the Germans -- portraying the occupying soldiers as very human and real instead of as cold and heartless. There is no doubt in my mind that this is precisely the reason for its success (and that Steinbeck is a genius in this respect). Steinbeck wrote about the plight of the occupied citizenry in a way that was so real that he reached them. It is also precisely in the occupying army's humanity that Steinbeck places the weapon that ultimately inspires the occupied and destroys the occupier: fear. One of the occupying soldiers articulates the fear very clearly: "The enemy's everywhere! Their faces look out of the doorways. The white faces behind the curtains, listening. We have beaten them, we have won everywhere, and they wait and obey, and they wait" (p. 64). He goes on to liken the occupying army's success to that of flies who conquer flypaper. And of course the novel itself brings the fear to life -- the flypaper ultimately proves quite inhospitable to the flies.Steinbeck's work is interesting on deeper levels, too. Freedom and leadership are clearly top-of-mind for him, and he elegantly describes both. Steinbeck's Mayor is a wonderful leader and a powerful advocate for freedom as indefatigable. He tells the colonel of the occupying forces, for instance: "You and your government do not understand. In all the world yours is the only government and people with a record of defeat after defeat for centuries and every time because you do not understand people" (p. 48). The colonel's lack of understanding is precisely that the will to be free will prevail.Finally, the Mayor is such a wonderful case study of a leader who is born of the circumstances in which he finds himself. Early in the novelette he is timid and reticient. He seems to be waiting. Then, when one of his people kills an enemy soldier, he suddenly steps up, and says of the beginning of the occupation: "the people were confused and I was confused. We did not know what to do or think" (p. 54). But the action of this one person provides the guidance and clarity that he needs to catalyze his people. And with that one man's action, he takes his queue from his people (such a remarkably subtle but so significant characteristic of a great leader), and with great wisdom and courage leads his people in the exploitation of his occupier's great fear.Definitely a good (short) read.

I imagine many people who read this book don't realize that Steinbeck wrote "The Moon is Down" as a vehicle for propaganda. It was translated into many languages and distributed throughout the world. The original setting was a small town in the United States, but William "Wild Bill" Donovan of the OSS and others felt it would be too horrific for the people of the United States so soon after World War II so Steinbeck changed the setting to an unnamed northern European country. Steinbeck did considerable research on resistance in occupied countries and found that though the countries had different histories, cultures, languages, etc., the most successful methods of resisting and fighting the enemy were the same everywhere: the method he portrays in "The Moon is Down." Students who choose to read this book for a school assignment will really impress their teachers if they note that the title is a phrase from Shakespeare's "MacBeth." (Be sure to find the source in the play--I'm not going to give you everything!)