“In The Moon Is Down John Steinbeck describes his fictional town’s informal network system, the characters in that system and the roles they play, and the bewilderment and frustration of the invaders with the villagers, who don’t behave as expected. “How Owning The Moon Is Down Became a Capital Crime” In a SteinbeckNow publication Aptitled, “Was John Steinbeck the First Social Ecologist” I wrote the following as part of the the full article which has a direct relation to Russia (formal system) and Ukraine (informal networks): Photo of Theodor Broch, the exiled mayor of Narvik, Norway. But that’s a subject for another op-ed on John Steinbeck’s continuing relevance. But it will please fans of Steinbeck’s writing, which also includes A Russian Journal, Steinbeck’s 1948 nonfiction work in which Ukrainians emerge as victims of central planning and Russian belligerence.

The op-ed’s subtitle-“How John Steinbeck’s ‘The Moon Is Down’ inspired resistance to occupation”-might give away the lede.

“President Zelensky’s leadership of Ukraine’s resistance is a testament to democracy” profiles the Ukrainian president as a modern-day Mayor Orden, the fictional character Steinbeck likely modeled on the exiled mayor of Narvik, Norway. A Maop-ed in The Washington Post, by a literary-minded diplomat named Charles Edel, uses Steinbeck’s 1942 novella-play to educate another generation, and inspire resistance to another invasion and another dictator, eight decades later. John Steinbeck’s wrote The Moon Is Down to inform Americans and inspire people in the formerly free countries of Europe-Norway, Denmark, Holland, France-occupied by Hitler’s forces in 1941.

Steinbeck the moon is down