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
60 How well ivanov understands the situation is illustrated when he says« "Our positions might equally be reversed". 1 4 By this statement he had predicted his own fate: he was shot for sentimental weakness, for trying to save Rubakhov's life» The three persons of the novel, the interrogators Gletkin and Ivanov: and the interrogated Rubashov represent the future of the Party, the present of the Party and the past of the Party, respectively. Ivanov and Gletkin, "Rubashov's alter egos",^ are complimentary persons in terms of the methods they use trying to wring out the confession. Ivanov, another man of ideas, appealed to reason, whereas Gletkin, the practical man, used brute force (the glaring light, lack of sleep, constant questioning). The methods they respectively applied can give full account of why the accused confessed. Cruel, severe torture is part and parcel of both books: "Technically" speaking in Darkness at Noon it is torture by ideas, in Nineteen Eighty-Four it is torture by instruments. Both are and will be* however, interchangeable. Ivanov's place can easily be filled by Gletkin,, another cog in the Party machine. Both Darkness at Noon and Nineteen Eighty-Four illustrate how worthless the individual is in totalitarianism, anyone can be changed for anyone else without the slightest harm done to the collective whole. Rubashov as a Party man served history of which the Party was only the instrument. History, the "mocking oracle" appeared for them as an unfathomable will before which all individual aspirations are fragile. It appears as an external force, something which knows better where it is going. What does Rubashov have to oppose this allmighty force? He has the slowly awakening I, what he calls the '"grammatical fiction". Up to this point Rubashov has been an incomplete human being, without a Self. Up until now his human ideas have been absorbed in cruelty. Now be realizes that there is (there would have been) something else, something infinite, the "oceanic sense", the existence of which is not conducive to the maintenance of his closed system. It is so much dissimilar to everything he has known so far that he does not really know how to handle it. He tries to apply the dialectic method to it, but has to realize that it does not work, here is no dissecting it, there is no real answer in Iiis closed system to the grammatical fiction. But Rubashov has been the prisoner of his closed system too long to be able to break free. The "secret sharer" is not capable of dislodging him from behind the bastion of reason... He senses that the "grammatical fiction'' is a very precarious, elusive tiling, something not worth leaving the shelter of history for. The 1 threatens the validity of his entire life, his past as a revolutionary. His entire life has been spent in the service of
