Midnight Black

The novel’s view about the high cost of war is evident through Denis’s clear-eyed appraisal of his time as a sergeant in the 173rd Special Purpose (Spetsnaz) detachment of the 22nd Guards Brigade. He describes being hit by a Ukrainian grenade that sent him sailing out of a window and killed three of his comrades. Denis survived with grave wounds in his head, back, and legs, with only one silver lining: “His war was over” (85). Not only have Denis’s experiences on the front disillusioned him about war, but he also sees through the sham of military glory, noting that as a war hero, his biggest honor was being given a job as a grocery-store clerk. The novel offers Denis’s experience as a metaphor for war in general. When pensioners on the train between St. Petersburg and Moscow vehemently discuss the need to eliminate Ukraine and joke “about civilian casualties and tortured POWs” (277), Court becomes angry because he knows the real cost of war, and his understanding reflects the novel’s argument that the true costs of war are the human lives and the toll it takes on the survivors.

While examining the cost of war, the narrative also explores the ambiguous ethics and price of espionage, highlighting the blurred boundary between good and evil. Court often takes assignments that he believes are morally upright, like his personal mission of saving Zoya. Yet the body count racked up in the process of achieving his goal is so high that it raises questions about the rightness of Court’s mission. Another morally gray aspect of Court’s brand of espionage is that it prioritizes individual morality over institutions since institutions are shown to be inherently corrupt in the novel. The problem with this approach is that individual morality is subjective. For instance, Zack is shown to harbor a bias against Russia, such as when he tells Sorkin that he doesn’t need a translator, commenting, “No offense, but there’s nobody in your country I want to talk to, anyway.” (421). These small points highlight the role that the subjective lens of an individual’s moral compass plays in larger questions of right and wrong.

The spies and soldiers are also shown to pay a heavy personal cost for their line of work, further complicating the morality of their missions. Court and Zoya hardly get any time together at the end of the book, and many soldiers and agents in the novel avoid personal connections for fear of endangering their loved ones. Despite these challenges, war and espionage are presented as a necessary evil in the book, essential to bring order to a highly chaotic, imperfect world. One way that the novel stresses the necessary evil of espionage is through juxtaposing Court’s job with the workings of people like Baronov, who routinely use torture and violence to break down their enemies. Espionage is also shown to be necessary because of the highly surveilled nature of the current world, with security cameras at every street corner, artificial intelligence picking up anomalies in surveillance tapes, and agencies hacking into feeds. In this fragmented world, the novel argues, the human cost of espionage and war may be high, but there may be no better alternative.