The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck

In this masterful tale set in Norway during World War II, Steinbeck explores the effects of invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors. As he delves into the emotions of the German commander and the Norwegian traitor, and depicts the spirited patriotism of the Norwegian underground, Steinbeck uncovers profound, often unsettling truths about war—and about human nature.

Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s self-described “celebration of the durability of democracy” had an extraordinary impact as Allied propaganda in Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite Axis efforts to suppress it (in Fascist Italy, mere possession of the book was punishable by death),
The Moon is Down was secretly translated into French, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian and Russian; hundreds of thousands of copies circulated throughout Europe, making it by far the most popular piece of propaganda under the occupation. Few literary works of our time have demonstrated so triumphantly the power of ideas in the face of cold steel and brute force.

Why I Picked It Up

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At this point, y'all know I've been on a massive John Steinbeck tear this summer. He's easily one of my favorite writers; there's that "click" quality that just makes each of his works searing for me.

One aspect that's nice about Steinbeck is that he has behemoths and slim little novels totaling under 200 pages. So you can pick a tome, or have a quick read.

I've been working my way through his smaller works (Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, etc.) while also considering if I need to ration myself to make his canon last longer, to the extent that I’ve rewritten this particular sentiment or introduction in maybe 50% of my latest blog posts. You know exactly what I’m going to say to segue into each individual book.

About 'The Moon Is Down'

The Moon Is Down is about wartime and the resistant spirit, and for that reason, it was one of Steinbeck's most powerful pieces—secretly printed and distributed abroad, for example.

In a shiver-inducing anecdote, as a gal who resides on O'ahu, he actually finished his draft the night before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. (That being said, Steinbeck was also a liar at times—so who knows how this was fact-checked? The timing seems to align with his claim though.)

The Moon Is Down deals with the occupation of a fictional European town and some of the headaches and bureaucracies that accompany that—neither side entirely knowing what they're doing once settled, but enduring the weight of the action regardless. Up until now, war has been almost pretend but now there are real townspeople frustrated and confused.

The tenderness of Steinbeck's usual characterization across both sides adds a jolt of hurt to the war effort, because if there's one thing he's great at, it's making a two-line introduction humanize someone entirely, which goes to diffuse some of our sternly held beliefs of what defines evil or corruption. He writes a lot about guilt, shame, and who feels responsible for what when the scope of their decisions ripple further beyond them, and that theme is obvious here. Steinbeck's not afraid to use references within dialogue, either, so for example, he talks about a Socrates line where man must not be concerned with calculating his odds of living or dying but with making the right or wrong judgments.

For obvious reasons, The Moon Is Down reminds me of Albert Camus's The Plague and that strange, wobbly, in-between of normalcy people occupy in a disaster or conflict when they don't know what to rely on in terms of sameness. What do you reach for when you’re not sure what the big picture looks like? Which events inspire a sense of solidarity within a community, and which ones fracture them further?

Lines I Loved & Highlighted

(There are more, but I've misplaced my copy somewhere in my studio — which is buried in post-trip laundry and the mid-purge explosion of having decided to donate a bunch of clothes and home goods — so I need to deep clean and sort this afternoon before adding a bunch more.)

“The people are confused now. They have lived at peace so long that they do not quite believe in war.”

“Lieutenants Prackle and Tonder were snot-noses, undergraduates, lieutenants, trained in the politics of the day, believing the great new system invented by a genius so great that they never bothered to verify its results. They were sentimental young men, given to tears and furies.”

“He tried to put aside the sick memories of the other war and the certainty that this would be the sameThis one will be different, he said to himself fifty times a day; this one will be very different.”

“Winter said, 'I would guess it is for the show. There’s an idea about it: if you go through the form of a thing, you have it, and sometimes people are satisfied with the form of a thing.' ”

Overall Thoughts

The Moon Is Down is solidly great, and I see why it's one of Steinbeck's most defining works. He pulls in a lot of his evergreen curiosities like Greek phalanx and a certain dejectedness in the face of others' greed for power—that we cannot always be straightforward. It's a slim read, one I finished one morning hanging out on a friend's couch.

Most people love this one for its sweeping, democratic inspiration. While that's definitely laudable (and I see why it was popular during the early stages of WWII because Steinbeck didn't believe that the U.S. staying out of war was realistic even before Pearl Harbor), again, I love these bittersweet, complex moments of "no right answer" most in that you can argue over who should be held responsible for certain scopes of tragedy.

Is it the foot soldier carrying out orders, despite the nobility of his initial recruitment? Is it a higher-up who's not even there? When does an individual decision reverberate or "matter" versus when is rebellion just stupidity that's going to be buried and meaningless because you haven’t made it significant or practical enough? There are people who argue for and against whether or not you can ever change anything "within" a system, and that will likely never not be the most distinctive rift in a desire for change — people calling others with their same beliefs either hypocrites or virtue-signalers depending on where they fall in their logic. Like in most things, my answer is "it's complicated" as I weigh both sides of the argument.

Lots of food for thought, and I just love how Steinbeck can add these contrasting, significant moments of gentleness that always seem to show grace in the right ways. As he writes (and reflects on throughout his works), purpose doesn't seem to stave off loneliness, and certain moments propel that truth up to the surface in surprising ways.

For fans of:

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck; The Plague by Albert Camus; Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez; A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; etc.