Just when you think this little coastal village would be a nice place to live, the woman you try to date or rape or whatever you want to call it ends up killing you with her knitting scissors.
This short book is a real page turner. A political thriller. Author John Steinbeck is a master at keeping you interested. He says so much with so little words, in less than 150 pages.
On one quiet morning a small town is easily occupied by a foreign miliatary force, whose soldiers were told that they would be welcomed as liberators to a better life. Indeed, at first the soldiers like their mission. Some even fantasize about settling here after the war. The people are pleasant, they offer no resistance. The landscape is beautiful. And really, it's an engineering operation, not military, as they are just seeking to make more efficient means of extracting the local natural resource: coal.
Published in 1942, the unnamed town is presumably in Norway. The unnamed occupier is presumably the Nazi's. The truths are universal. The characters are rich, as individuals on both sides are portrayed as humans with foibles, strengths and weaknesses. The town mayor. The occupying general. The townspeople. The soldiers. The servants. The officers.
It's absolutely classic. We all know this story. At first there seems to be no resistence. But it changes. What do you want to call it? Resistence. Passive resistence. Guerilla warfare. Terrorism. You decide. Steinbeck uses the word resistence.
What can the townspeople do? They must do anything and everything they are told to do. Slave in the coal mine. Give sex to soldiers. Say nothing extraordinary. Be publically executed otherwise.
What they do is work slowly in the mines. They badly cook meals. They don't talk or make eye contact. They blow up bridges and roads. They pretend to date and then kill their companions. And the mayor is in on all of it; although the occupying general believes he's cooperating.
An occupying force follows one leader. The townspeople are all full of leadership. If their leader gets killed, ten more pop up. If a hundred get killed, a thousand more emerge. You can kill a lot of people, but you can never fully eliminate their human capacity.
LOVE John Steinbeck!
Thanks so much for coming over to the Charmer Blog.
In peace, joy, prosperity, and truth, T
