Do you believe that in the struggle of wills Mate Snow would have given in to the urge of the Chinaman? What circumstances argue for the result? What is against it?
Page 465. Do not fail to take the full meaning of the paragraph to heart: “He lay so still over there on the couch.” In what lines is the thought most poignant?
Page 467. Why is the expression “Urkey’s unwashed collars” used with fine effect?
What satisfaction do you find in the closing tableau?
THE DARK HOUR
“The Dark Hour” has, in the story sense, no plot. The only action lies in a fragmentary discussion between the sick man, Hallett, and his physician who paces the deck of the homeward bound vessel. The only hint of a struggle lies in the conflicting viewpoints of the two men.
Hallett holds that Germany has a vision—“a red, bloody, damned vision”—but a vision. The Allies have, as yet, no vision.
The doctor argues that the Allies want to win the war.
Hallett replies that this desire is nightmare.—“The only thing to beat a vision black as midnight is a vision white as the noonday sun.” He eventually gives the possible vision,—symbolized earlier by his words, “There’s a bright star, doctor,”—in the thin-worn word, “Democracy.” He declares that such an impossible Utopia must come—or “Hamburg to Bagdad.” As the doctor declares that this wild empire of the spirit is impossible and Hallett agrees, cryptically, that it is impossible, the watch cries “All’s well.” Hallett then says we may do the impossible, after all; in all the world is nothing but the sound of the barricades of revolution. He sees the star, as he has seen it in the beginning of the dialogue.
The argument thus becomes an optimistic prophecy of the final vision of the Allies. At Thanksgiving, 1918, the impossible seems about to be realized: Hallett was essentially right, in his point of view.