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A character in Darkness at Noon

Hare-lip

Hare-lip is a young prisoner brought into Rubashov’s final interrogation as a supposed witness to an assassination conspiracy.

The book

Cover of Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Darkness at NoonArthur Koestler, 1940

A revolutionary is arrested by the state he helped create and ordered to confess to crimes he did not commit.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Hare-lip is a young prisoner brought into Rubashov’s final interrogation as a supposed witness to an assassination conspiracy. He appears frightened and constrained by a script the authorities have imposed. His precise background and later fate remain deliberately unclear. His function is to show how the state manufactures connections between prisoners to complete a predetermined case.

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