Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)
József Hruby: Two "Last Men in Europe": A. Koestler's Darkness at Noon and G. Ornwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
61 history. Rubashov decides that he belongs to history. Sticking within history is the only way for him to secure his bond with he past. He is afraid of being "pushed" out of history, since it is history that he can pin his last hope to, only it can grant him absolution. "Confession is the only way that he can return to he fold". 1 ^ He knows that he is doomed anyway but if he fails to confess to the charges brought against him, he will be "vapourised" in silence, dropped into oblivion through the Party's "memory hole". Rubashov accepts his own perjury and death as a last service to the Party. He has no place to go, having given his mind to the Party, he has no mind to resist when the Party demands his eath and life. He came a long way towards repudiating totalitarism, but he dies without final certainties, having been humiliated through confession. In Nineteen Eighty-Four the almighty and omnipotent Party seeks to control the past, the present and the future. "He who controls the past controls the present, who controls the present controls the". 1 ^ The Party wants to turn the past into the creation of the present, to destroy any idea of objective truth. When Julia and Winston are arrested in the room above Mr. Charringhton's shop, where, significantly most of the action takes place, Winston's coral is smashed by the Thought Police. The mutability of the Past... It is worth noting here the difference in the quality of Winston's and Julia's relationship between the country and the junk shop. In the country there was an agressive hardness about their relationship in spite of the calmness of their surroundings. Winston knows that: "No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred". 1 ^ The junk shop, an ultimate place, is their own world, where everything is as real as it was in the past. They can get much closer to each other, indulging in their privateness and in the sense of the past that the room generates. The hope of being remembered has sustained free men in dark times throughout history. The Greeks, the Romans carried out their valorous civic deeds in the hope of being remembered by the ages coming after theirs. Such hope does not exist for Winston Smith, the unheroic hero of the book, "You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you". 1 9 Winston's problem is the same has that of Rubashov's. But whereas Rubashov as a faint hope of being remembered. Winston has no hope at all. In Nineteen Eighty-Four the basic conflict is similar to that in Darkness at Noon : the humanist past and the totalitarian sadism of the present (and of the future?).
