30 January 2009 Friday

The Moon is Down

On one of the first pages in Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis is a line:

The Moon’s gone down, but
Alone I lie.

Reading this threw me for a loop, since I had also just started reading The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck and I fully forgot which book I was reading. I wonder, and I think, that Orson Scott Card’s line from Ender’s Game:

the enemy’s gate is down

must stem from Steinbeck’s line or be rooted from the same source. Their message is the same.

From The Moon is Down:

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.

How do I adequately convey how good this book is? Its story and message are so simple, but so deep, sad, beautiful, ugly, sad, and true. Steinbeck must have seen so much beauty, and known so much pain, to write what and as he does.