"The Moon is Down" Question 2

The conflict dealt with within "The Moon is Down" is pretty straight forward; Nazi's have invaded and conquered a town and the towns people of that particular town (which is somewhere in Europe, but never specifically stated) aren't to happy about it.  This is obviously a gain for the invaders as opposed to the invadees.  The Nazi's are there for the towns coal and fishing and they use these resources to their pleasing.  Eventually everything isn't rainbows and sunshine for the soldiers, though.  The towns people can't do much about the soldiers, but what they can do they use as much as their advantage as possible.  This definitely makes the soldiers life much more difficult.  Because the soldiers have invader their town, the towns people don't really gain anything.  They of course have various losses though.  One loss being the loss of their mine.  The miners are still made to work, though, but not as free workers.  They're basically made into slaves of the Nazi's.  They loose their mine and their freedom all within a few hours.  People are also killed regularly throughout the novel and by the end of the book killing doesn't even come with question.  Someone acts up, the soldiers shoot. The soldiers also suffer loss through out the novel, though.  They really didn't sign up for what they're thrown into.  They were simply suppose to get in, get the town under control, utilize their resources and send them onto the rest of their army where ever they were, and get out.  Instead they're still stuck there a year later and they really have no clue about what's going on anywhere else in the war.  They've gone with out seeing their families for how long and they haven't had real, hot food in over a year.  This drives a lot of them crazy and they begin to talk to themselves and make some pretty rash decisions.  Don't get me wrong though, I'm still totally on the town side. They're put in the position of being used and told what to do for absolutely no reason, well besides Adolf Hitler was a messed up dude.          






Simon, Marion, and C. Bosker. John Steinbeck: The Moon Is down. Paterswolde: Dalcomtext, 1997. Print.