topics: |  fiction | usa | classic | nobel-1962

"The Moon is Down, " Steinbeck's comment on the moral and ethical
implications of war, begins in an unknown town that has just been occupied by
a small regiment of enemy soldiers. With no altenrnative, the Mayor of the
town agrees to meet with the enemy to try to work out a plan for peaceful
co-existence before the impending war goes much further.

Excerpts

Captain Loft was as much a captain as one can imagine. He lived and
breathed his captaincy. He had no unmilitary moments. - p.20

[The German army is beginning to feel suffocated amidst the hatred of
people all around. Some are beginning to lose their minds.]
And Tonder went on laughing. "Conquest after conquest, deeper and
deeper into molasses... Flies conquer the flypaper. Flies capture two
hundred miles of new flypaper!" - p.69

"And the girl," Lanser continued, "the girl. Lieutenant, you may rape
her, or protect her, or marry her - that is of no importance so long
as you shoot her when it is ordered." - p.102

Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on
in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it
is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
	- Mayor Orden to Colonel Lanser - p.108

Socrates says, "Someone will say, 'And are you not ashamed, Socrates,
of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?'
To him I may fairly answer, 'There you are mistaken: a man who is good
for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he
ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.'"
	- Mayor Orden