From Norway to the North Shore: An Aged Minnesotan’s Take on Occupation and Resilience

A friend recently recommended John Steinbeck’s "The Moon is Down," a short novel with a powerful parable about the resilience of the human spirit under military (or ICE) occupation.

Written to support the Allied war effort during World War II, the story is set in a small, unnamed coastal mining town in Northern Europe, likely Norway. The town is suddenly invaded and occupied by an unnamed military force from a warring country led by a dictator.

The story emphasizes that "free people" cannot be permanently broken because their leadership is always decentralized. If one leader is killed, another emerges — the power of democracy. One of the book's most famous lines describes the occupiers' plight: "The flies have conquered the flypaper." This suggests that while the invaders have "caught" the town, they are now stuck and slowly being destroyed by the very people they intended to control.

Sounds familiar to an aged Minnesota man. 

Steinbeck humanizes the occupiers, portraying them as lonely, frightened, and homesick men rather than mindless monsters, arguing that this made them even more vulnerable to the town's cold, silent resistance.

At the end of the novella, the town's resistance has intensified. The invaders, led by Colonel Lanser, have arrested Mayor Orden and his friend Dr. Winter. Lanser issues a final ultimatum: if the townspeople continue their sabotage and use the dynamite dropped by the British, Orden and Winter will be executed.

As they wait for the inevitable, Mayor Orden and Dr. Winter begin to recite from memory Plato's Apology—specifically the speech Socrates gave to the Athenian jury before his execution.

When Lanser threatens him, Orden explains that while his physical body can be killed, the "office" of the Mayor cannot be arrested. He tells Lanser, "The Mayor is an idea conceived by free men. It will escape arrest."

By quoting the Apology, Orden aligns himself with Socrates. He argues that the people who kill him will suffer more than he will, because his death will prove the injustice of the occupiers and ignite a fire they cannot extinguish.

Steinbeck used this ending to argue that "Herd men" (those who follow a single dictator) can win battles, but "Free men" (those who follow ideas like democracy) win wars. Because the idea of the "Mayor" lives in every citizen, the occupiers can never truly kill the leadership of a free people.