Darkness at Noon: The Third Hearing: 6 Summary & Analysis

After five or six days Rubashov faints during an accusation as they’re talking about his motives. A few minutes later he comes to as the doctor is pouring water on his face, recommending that he be taken outside. Expressionless, Gletkin orders Rubashov back to his cell, and then he’s taken to the yard to exercise. Rubashov feels intoxicated by the fresh air, and he marvels at how he’d taken this for granted before.

Rubashov walks next to the peasant again, who says he hasn’t seen Rubashov for a while. He muses on memories of his village, and how happy he once was there. Then, Rubashov asks if the peasant remembers the story in the Bible about the tribes in the desert crying that they should return to Egypt. The peasant nods eagerly, but then they’re brought back inside.

Rubashov is taken back to Gletkin’s room, and he realizes it’s only been an hour. This question of motive is the final one, Gletkin says: afterward Rubashov will be able to rest. Rubashov, though, says that Gletkin knows his motives. Rubashov wasn’t in the service of a foreign power or subject to a “counter-revolutionary mentality.” He acted according to his own conscience. Gletkin pulls out Rubashov’s diary from his drawer, reading what he wrote about how the person in the wrong must pay, and the person in the right will be absolved. Rubashov asks why everything he’s signed and said isn’t enough: after all, he himself is a piece of Party history that Gletkin is now defiling.

Gletkin again cites from Rubashov’s diary, saying that repetition and simplification is necessary for the masses. Gletkin tells him that his trial testimony will be his last service to the Party. For the first time in history, a revolution will keep, not just conquer power. They thought that the rest of the world would follow them, Gletkin says, but a wave of reaction ensued: they’ve had to liquidate the adventurers who wanted to risk everything to promote the revolution abroad, like Rubashov. For now, the leader recognizes that the Party’s only duty is to preserve itself. They’ve had to betray friends and compromise with enemies to do so: only aesthetes and moralists fail to understand this.

Gletkin continues that Rubashov’s faction is destroyed, and now the Party can continue united. Rubashov’s task is to avoid awakening sympathy for the opposition, and to make himself seem contemptible with the Party, rather than to try to explain his complicated motives. Rubashov says he understands. Gletkin reads from Rubashov’s diary that if he is right, he has nothing to repent of, and if he is wrong, he’d pay: he’s wrong and must pay, Gletkin says. The Party only promises that one day, long after the victory, the secret archives will be published, and sympathy will be granted to the old guard.

Rubashov signs the statement, and looks up to the portrait of No. 1, remembering the look of knowing irony he’d given him the last time they’d met. Gletkin says Rubashov won’t be bothered until the trial, and asks if there’s anything else he wants: just sleep, Rubashov answers. When Rubashov leaves, the stenographer congratulates Gletkin. Gletkin says that the lamp, plus lack of sleep and exhaustion, is all that was necessary.