Worldview In Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon

Darkness at Noon In order to best understand peoples, cultures and their history, knowledge of worldview, or an understanding and knowledge of Reality, is of the utmost importance. Familiarity with the worldview of a people group and how it is manifested within their history, aids us in understanding and developing an accurate philosophy of history. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler provides us with an incredible example of the worldview held by those who are under a totalitarian regime, a system in which the government has total control over social, economic and political life, specifically that of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Koestler describes two specific worldviews, that of the older generation and that of the new generation of communist party members. Using the novel Darkness at Noon, the worldview of the older generation in comparison to the new generation through characters such as Ivanov and Gletkin, Wassilijl and his daughter, and …show more content…
Rubashov was once a leader of the party, but is cast into disgrace and treated as a traitor. He is jailed, tortured, and made to admit to a crime he did not commit. The party Rubashov had worked so hard for becomes nothing to him but “desert and darkness of night” (Darkness, #). Even Ivanov, a man of the older generation of the party who had interrogated Rubashov, is betrayed by the new generation and arrested and executed as an enemy of the party. In the end, Rubashov believes the original aim and the purpose of the party has become more than just unsettled, it has been totally lost. The ends cannot justify the means since the means create the end and are a definite part of the outcome. The means which Rubashov, just as the older generation of the party, had used culminates in the creation of a new generation and is the reason for his mistreatment and