Genre
Russian Political Literature
Setting and Context
Moscow, 1938, during the Moscow Show Trials
Narrator and Point of View
Rubashov is the protagonist and everything that happens in the novel is from his point of view. He is representative of all of the Old Bolsheviks who are now threatened by the Communist regime.
Tone and Mood
Depressing and pessimistic; oppressive and threatening
Protagonist and Antagonist
Rubashov is the protagonist, the Stalinist regime the antagonists.
Major Conflict
The book takes place against a background of World War Two, so there is therefore conflict within Europe and within Russia in particular. The Moscow Show Trials which were anything but just and legal were taking place during the novel.
Climax
Rubashov confesses his "crimes" as alleged, but it is too late; he is executed.
Foreshadowing
Ivanov's death foreshadows the fact that Rubashov's confession will be meaningless, and not keep him from execution.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
Koestler alludes to the real-life Moscow Trials that sent many members of the Communist Party to their deaths.
Imagery
The images painted are all very brutal but also demonstrate the way in which the Soviet regime deals in the "masses" more than the individual. Every image shows a mass of people, specifically being executed in public.
Paradox
Rubashov is being interrogated and brutalized in exactly the same way that he used to brutalize people and interrogate them.
Parallelism
There is a parallel in the book between the Communist regime and the Nazi one, in the way that they brutalize and slaughter enormous numbers of people.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The Old Bolsheviks represent the older members of the Communist party in Russia pre-Revolution,
Personification
N/A
