Examples Of Resistance In John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down

French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, once said “ When there is power, there is resistance.” This quote is proven true in the book The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck. The invaders come to the town and take control over the townspeople. However, throughout the novel, the townspeople resist in many different ways to try and get their normal lives back. The two most important types of resistance that the townspeople displayed are Violent resistance, which is resisting violently, and Quite sabotage resistance, which is resisting quietly but having a big impact.
The biggest type of resistance in the book is violent resistance. Violent resistance is when someone resists with guns, knives, and killing. Colonel lanser was just expecting
to hear a gunshot that would kill Alex, not a gunshot from the townspeople. He knew right away what had happened and immediately said “So it starts! Are you badly hurt lieutenant?”(55) This act of resistance shows that the townspeople aren’t scared to use their weapons. This gets the invaders scared because the townspeople have weapons and will use them at any moment. This type of resistance is shown again when hen Molly killed Tonder. She didn’t have a real weapon, but because of her anger “she was holding them [scissors] like a knife.”(59) The townspeople are willing to risk their lives to ruin whatever plan the invaders have. Violent resistance can have the most impact on something but you are also risking your own life while resisting with violence. Another big type of resistance in the book is quite sabotage resistance.
This resistance is when someone resists with not a lot of attention, but it has a big impact. Some of the invaders were missing their homes, and the restaurants made it worse for them. The invaders would smell the warm food but then they “found that it was over salted and peppered”(58) Some acts of resistance don’t need to be so obvious, this is a perfect example of one. Adding extra salt and pepper made the soldiers want to leave more. This wasn’t an obvious resistance but it had a big impact. ANother example of this resistance is when It was very dark and sad in the town for the invaders who heard the good reports that were coming from their hometown. They would shoot people with flashlights by the coal mine and “when the english bombers came over, some light always appeared near the coal mine” (59) The townspeople are willing to risk their lives to ruin whatever plan the invaders have. Quite sabotage resistance is very important because it can have the biggest impacts and it doesn’t take much to resist this way. In The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck, the townspeople find numerous different ways to resist. When the invaders are in control, the acts of resistance won’t stop. We learn from Steinbeck’s examples of power of democracy that if a country has power over the citizens, the people won’t surrender so easily. They will do whatever it takes to get back their
freedom.