Breaking the chains: an approach to The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler

Abstract

This work constitutes an analysis of the novel The Gladiators, by Arthur Koestler, under the guidance of key terms in the study of politics, social movements and collective action. The purpose of this is to point out the role that thought, actions and passions, in conjunction with opportunities, alliances, confrontations and tensions, occupy in the processes of conservation, transformation, rupture and change. The human condition of plurality, which brings with its unions and encounters, but also contentions and disruptions, is the framework for all this. Yet, the humanly other is precisely what allows for new beginnings and the breaking of chains, metaphorical or not, that imprison and restrain the exercise of freedom.