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Summary

Summary (Critical Guide to British Fiction)

At the outset of the novel, Alec Leamas is waiting in West Berlin at the Wall for Karl Riemeck to comeacross. Riemeck is the only remaining spy in a network Leamas has been running successfully for some timein the East German state. Although everything has fallen apart since the promotion of Hans-Dieter Mundt toDeputy Director of Operations for the East German Secret Service, Leamas still has hope that his man will beable to reach the West. The border checks seem to be going smoothly until, at the last moment, the alarm issounded and Riemeck is shot—several feet short of freedom.

Back in England, Leamas must face up to his failure by reporting personally to Control. Certain that his age,fifty, and the ignominious collapse of an intelligence network that at one time was the glory of the BritishSecret Service will spell disaster for his career in the eyes of his superiors, Leamas reviews his life. He haslived the inevitable life of an intelligence agent—a loner, especially since his divorce from his wife. Lately,though, Leamas has also questioned his motives: Was he losing his nerves of steel, the hardness necessary fora person in his profession? An incident while he was racing down the autobahn, when a sudden attack of fearfor the lives of a man and his children in a car struck him, illustrates his newfound moral uncertainty.

Rather than ask Leamas to resign, though, Control has another job for him, one last service that Leamas canperform for the Circus before he is allowed to resolve his emotional conflicts and “come in from the cold.”Leamas can help protect their last double agent in East Germany, an agent who is so highly placed and sovaluable that his identity will not be revealed even to Leamas.

Only a small group at the Circus knows about this last assignment. Leamas is transferred to a desk job.Always given to drink, he goes into a decline, eventually embezzles some funds, and leaves. Soon, he muststart drawing welfare benefits, and his counselor forces him to take a job at a small library. His fellowassistant at the Bayswater Library for Psychic Research is Liz Gold, a Marxist and a Branch Secretary in theLondon District of the Communist Party, who takes pity on Leamas and starts inviting him to her flat fordinner. Eventually, they become lovers. Lcamas warns Liz that one day he will disappear, and he makes herpromise never to follow him. One day, he picks a fight with a local grocer, knocks him out, and is sent toprison.

Immediately out of prison, Leamas is followed by a Communist agent who lures him to Holland with thepromise of money for divulging information about the British Secret Service. While he is cooperating with theenemy in Holland, a story breaks in the press that Leamas has defected to the East. Although this was not partof the plan and certainly puts him at much greater risk, Leamas is forced to flee to East Germany.

Once across the Iron Curtain, Leamas is taken to a remote country cottage and given a new interrogator,Fiedler, the notorious Mundt’s second-in-command. Leamas continues to play the game as rehearsed, thedrunk ousted without pity by the British Secret Service, alternately verbally attacking his new accomplicesand relating tidbits of classified information. As Leamas and Fiedler return to the cottage from one of theirevening walks, they are savagely attacked by Mundt’s sentries. Leamas strangles one of the sentries. He

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awakens in prison, is brutalized by another guard in Mundt’s presence, and next awakens in a hospital ward,Fiedler at the foot of his bed.

Fiedler tells Leamas that he had long suspected Mundt of being a double agent and that while Mundt wasputting them in prison, documentation implicating Mundt was already on its way to the Praesidium. NowMundt will be standing trial and Leamas will be the leading witness for the prosecution. At the trial, Fiedlerpresents the case expertly and appears to be winning the day. Then Mundt’s lawyer is asked to present hisdefense, and he calls as his first witness Liz Gold. Under a false pretext, the Communist Party had brought Lizto East Germany. The sight of each other in the courtroom shocks both Liz and Leamas. Though she lovesLeamas and senses the terrible danger he is in, Liz has no idea how her testimony will affect Leamas andtakes the only course possible: She tells the truth. She admits that Leamas had told her in advance that hewould be leaving; she relates how unknown benefactors had paid off Leamas’ debts after his disappearanceand had bought the lease on her apartment. Mundt’s lawyer uses this information to turn the tables on Fiedler,who is then himself implicated as the double agent, a tool of the Western capitalists. At that moment, Leamasunderstands clearly what he was sent to do and whom he was sent to protect—Mundt.

With Mundt’s help, Leamas and Liz are “allowed” to escape from prison and to drive through East Germanytoward Berlin and the Wall. As they speed through the East German countryside, they both attempt to come tosome sort of personal reconciliation concerning their role as pawns in this deadly game. At the Wall, theyhave ninety seconds between checkpoints to reach freedom. Again, events do not transpire as planned; Lizslips and is shot dead. Leamas, at the top of the Wall, has a choice. He decides to “come in from the cold”and returns to Liz’s body under a renewed barrage of gunfire.

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Summary (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)

Alec Leamas is a burned-out British espionage officer who has been in charge of running spies in the GermanDemocratic Republic (GDR). When his last agent, Karl Riemeck, is shot down in front of him at a bordercrossing, it signals the end of his network: The group of agents he has been running has been exposed by thehead of the Abteilung (the East German counterespionage agency), and Leamas is sent back to England forreassignment.

The shock of Riemeck’s death and the demise of Leamas’s network appear to indicate the close of his careeras a field officer, so Leamas believes that he will finally be allowed to abandon field work (“be brought infrom the cold,” in the parlance of the British Secret Intelligence Service). Leamas returns to the headquartersof the Secret Intelligence Service, nicknamed the Circus, because its headquarters is located in CambridgeCircus, London. The head of the Circus, a man known only as Control, informs Leamas that, if he is not readyfor a desk job, there is another field position that may be open to him. With the collaboration of Control andthe retired spymaster George Smiley, Leamas participates in a counterespionage plan to destroy the EastGerman spies who broke apart the British network.

The plan begins when Leamas sets up an elaborate charade in which he pretends to be disgruntled with theCircus. Amid bitter recriminations, he quits his desk job, claiming that it represented an undeserved demotion.Then, his life apparently spirals out of control. He circulates through a series of jobs, drinks too much, andlives a rough lifestyle. Finally, he secures a job in the Bayswater Library for Psychic Research, where he doesmenial work for little cash under the eye of the librarian Miss Crail, who seems to spend much of her daycomplaining about Leamas to her mother over the phone.

The one bright spot in Leamas’s new existence is that he meets a young fellow worker, Liz Gold, whobefriends him; the two become lovers. Although he genuinely begins to have feelings for Liz, Leamascontinues to play the dissolute former spy, alcoholic and angry. He becomes violent with his local grocer, isarrested, and is sentenced to jail.

The payoff for this deception occurs upon Leamas’s release from prison, when he is befriended by an oddlittle man named Bill Ashe. Ashe buys him food and drinks and gives him some cash, even putting Leamas upin his apartment for a few days. Ashe is a contact for East German intelligence, and he eventually passesLeamas off to another contact, who supplies him with false identity papers, some money, and booze andsneaks him out of the country. In Holland, another agent, apparently Russian, intensively interrogates Leamas.Meanwhile, a notice appears in the British newspapers reporting his defection and implying that he hasbetrayed his country. Leamas is now fully committed as a defector, providing British intelligence to a foreignpower for money and a berth in a neutral country.

Leamas is next transported to communist Berlin and then farther east to some sort of prison or interrogationcenter. There, he is questioned at some length by Fiedler, the deputy head of the Abteilung. During theirsessions, the men not only discuss the secrets Leamas is supposedly selling to East Germany but also engagein philosophizing about why they do what they do. Fiedler is shocked that Leamas has no overarching beliefin anything, thus echoing Liz’s similar earlier confusion. Fiedler also makes known his dislike and distrust ofhis superior, Mundt, and it becomes clear that he is looking for a way to implicate Mundt with Britishintelligence.

Mundt himself arrives, radically changing the situation. Fiedler disappears; Leamas is imprisoned, harshlyinterrogated, and charged with crimes against the state. He next appears in court, and during the trial itbecomes apparent that Fiedler and Mundt are jockeying for power. At first Fiedler appears to be successful inusing Leamas’s information against Mundt and to be winning the sympathy of the court. Mundt turns the

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tables on Fiedler, however, by producing Liz Gold as a witness and using her testimony against Fiedler.

It is revealed that, while Fiedler was interrogating Leamas in East Germany, Liz was offered a chance by herlocal Communist Party cell to visit East Germany as part of a cultural exchange program. Liz is thus in thecountry when Leamas is put on trial. It becomes clear that Mundt and perhaps some other unknown agencyhave colluded in setting up Fiedler. After the trial, Liz and Leamas appear to be in for long prison sentences,trapped behind the Iron Curtain. They are surprised, however, when an escape to the West unfolds, and theyare whisked into a car and told to drive to a certain point along the Berlin Wall.

During the drive, Leamas explains to Liz what has transpired. It is now clear that British Intelligence isinvolved in the events that have transpired: Mundt is actually a double agent working for the British, and theCircus has grown concerned that Fiedler is getting too close to discovering the truth about his boss. Mundt’sexposure would compromise whatever is left of the British spy network in the East. The real purpose ofLeamas’s mission, kept a secret from Leamas himself, was to provide Mundt with a means of discreditingFiedler, thereby eliminating the threat to him and preserving an extremely valuable source of intelligence.

The fleeing couple is given precise instructions about how to scale the wall without detection by avoiding thesearchlight and the guards. Leamas is to go first and then pull Liz after him. During the escape, however,everything goes wrong: It appears as though Liz is to be sacrificed, and only Leamas will be allowed toescape. Unable or unwilling to flee alone, Leamas crosses back onto the East German side of the wall, wherehe too is killed.

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Summary (Masterpieces of World Literature, CriticalEdition)

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold begins with a dramatic nighttime scene in which a British spy is shotdown while trying to escape from East Germany. Alec Leamas, a British agent, harbors hatred towardHans-Dieter Mundt, second in command of the Abteilung (East German intelligence service), who isresponsible for the extermination of Leamas’s entire spy network. Back in England, Leamas is recruited for asting operation against Mundt. Leamas is dismissed from the “Circus” (a special department of the BritishIntelligence Service) and pretends to go through a period of moral disintegration in order to make himselfseem like a good candidate for recruitment as a double agent. During this period he meets Liz Gold, a shy,lonely librarian, who falls in love with him. She happens to be a member of the British Communist Party butis more interested in personal relationships than in causes.

Leamas is approached and agrees to betray his service for a price. He is taken into East Germany, where hemeets Jens Fiedler, a brilliant Jewish intellectual deeply committed to Marxist-Leninist ideology. Fiedler isMundt’s chief rival in the Abteilung. Leamas disingenuously feeds Fiedler rehearsed information intended tomake it appear that Mundt has been working for the British. The zealous and ambitious Fiedler accuses Mundtof treason, and a trial is staged with Leamas as the star witness. Leamas, however, learns that George Smileyand his associates at the Circus have been clumsily covering up his tracks in England. For example, it isbrought out by Mundt’s defense that Leamas had “friends” who paid his overdue rent and other bills.

Then Gold is called as a surprise witness. She has been lured to East Germany on a bogus tour for members ofthe British Communist Party. She reveals that men calling themselves friends of Leamas came to herapartment and gave her money. One had identified himself as George Smiley, well known to the Abteilung asa highly placed member of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Leamas cannot understand how Smileycould have been so clumsy but begins to realize that the whole scheme was concocted to make it appear thatFiedler has been involved with the Circus in a conspiracy to destroy Mundt. That is exactly what the courtdecides is the truth. Fiedler is arrested and is certain to be executed as an agent provocateur. Mundt, aneo-Nazi and longtime British mole, is totally exonerated and obviously destined to become the mostimportant figure in the Abteilung.

Leamas will probably be executed. Gold is heartbroken; she feels responsible for betraying her lover. Thedisgusted Leamas tells Gold: “What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalidprocession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys andIndians to brighten their rotten lives.” Here le Carré is spelling out the theme that would serve to structure allof his future spy novels. In the Cold War, both sides are equally despicable. Human values are being outragedby the ideological clash of communism and capitalism.

Mundt proves the correctness of these conclusions by releasing Leamas and Gold and providing transportationto the Berlin Wall. Here is an echo of traditional spy novels, featuring daring escapes from enemy territoryunder a hail of bullets. Le Carré, however, deliberately violates the conventions of the genre by allowing heroand heroine to be caught in spotlights while trying to scale the Berlin Wall and dying within sight of freedom.

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Source: Critical Guide to British Fiction, ©1987 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Critical Survey of Literature for Students, ©2010 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical Edition, ©2009 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.

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Themes


Themes

Themes and Meanings (Critical Guide to British Fiction)

There are two major themes that are treated in this novel, and they are both questions of morality: Does theend justify the means? Should individuals be sacrificed for the good of the whole?

Leamas must deal with the first question in his search of self. Several times throughout the novel, agents ofthe East and West are described to be similar in their operating methods. Both kill; both condone killing.Because their society is more open and theoretically devoted to individual freedom and human dignity,however, Western agents are likely to encounter a real conflict between their lives as agents and their lives asmembers of society. The stigma that Western society attaches to killing means that agents of the free worldmust live their work lives “in the cold.”

The question of whether individuals ought to be sacrificed for the good of the whole is intertwined with thefirst. This is also the issue which causes the greatest dilemma for Liz and the tension between Liz andLeamas. As a member of the Communist Party, Liz has accepted the authority of the group. When it becomesclear, however, that Liz and Leamas are both pawns in this deadly war between East and West and aresacrifices to the conflict, Liz is the one who ultimately cannot accept the loss of her right to define her ownfate. Ironically, in his death, Leamas is affirming life and love and the individual’s right of choice.

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Social Concerns / Themes

The fact that le Carre is sensitive to political fashion and is able to anticipate a timely issue is considered hismost important achievement. Ostensibly, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold addresses the tensions in the1960s between East and West Germany, and in general between the East and the West. The construction ofthe Berlin Wall became a symbol of this ideological conflict, and le Carre at the beginning of his career andthereafter was able to seize upon a timely situation, well-documented because of his own personal experiencein Germany, and convincingly presented.

There is, however, a deeper concern in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and in basically all of le Carre'sespionage novels. Le Carre addresses the moral ambiguities facing everyone in contemporary society. Thereare no absolutes, neither in one's private nor one's political life. World War II evoked patriotism; there wereclear-cut issues, divisions of enemies and allies. Since the Vietnam War, in particular, these distinctions havebecome obscured; good is no longer justifiable, and evil is accepted as a part of life. Le Carre's creation of thedouble agent exemplifies this blurring of values, as does the image of mist so prevalent in his novels.

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Source: Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, ©2001 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Fullcopyright.




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Characters


Characters

The Characters (Critical Guide to British Fiction)

John le Carré is a rarity among writers of spy fiction. In most novels in this popular genre, character issacrificed to plot, but le Carré combines the pleasures of the well-plotted thriller with the deeper satisfactionsof serious fiction—particularly the development of complex, fully realized characters.

Leamas has reached a critical stage when he must question his entire way of life as a secret agent. Related inthe third person, revelations of Leamas’ personality are interspersed in the narrative. His failed marriage, thegrief and moral dilemma caused by the loss of his many agents, his alternate bouts of hate and compassion forthe agents of the enemy, his attraction to Liz, all play a significant part in the development of the plot. LizGold, for her part, must reconcile her dedication to the Party, which she joined out of compassion for themasses, with the realities of a bureaucratic system that will annihilate her love.

Even the characters that are not developed are given motivation for their action. Of one of Leamas’sinterrogators, the author says: “There was something very orthodox about him which Leamas liked. It was theorthodoxy of strength, of confidence. If Peters lied there would be a reason. The lie would be a calculated,necessary lie....”

The author also risks pedantry at times by inserting philosophy in the dialogues of the characters:“I don’tgive a damn whether you believe me or not,” Leamas rejoined hotly. Fiedler smiled. “I am glad. That is yourvirtue,” he said, “that is your great virtue. It is the virtue of indifference. A little resentment here, a little pridethere, but that is nothing: the distortions of a tape recorder. You are objective....”

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Characters Discussed (Great Characters in Literature)

Alec Leamas

Alec Leamas, a British spy, about fifty years old and a loner. Leamas, the former head of a network ofundercover agents operating out of Berlin, is directed by British Intelligence to stage a fake defection andbring about the downfall of Hans-Dieter Mundt, a top East German agent. Tough-minded and cynical, Leamashas long avoided the moral and ethical questions raised by his work, adopting the unspoken philosophy of hisprofession that any action is justified if it achieves the desired results. Divorced and the father of children herarely sees, Leamas is a case-hardened and emotionally isolated man until he begins a relationship with LizGold.

Liz Gold

Liz Gold, a woman in her early twenties, naïve, idealistic, and a member of the Communist Party. Liz isworking in a London library when she meets Leamas and becomes his lover. Tall, awkward, intelligent, andserious, Liz believes passionately in the future of world communism. She is warm and loving toward Leamas,and she remains ignorant of the true nature of his work until she becomes an unwitting participant in theespionage plot. Her journey to East Germany forces her to confront the realities of life in a communist stateand ends with her death at the Berlin Wall.

Control

Control, the head of British Intelligence. Known only by his code name, Control is a mixture of old schoolmanners and ruthless tactics. Detached and enigmatic, he is the master manipulator who pulls the strings thathold the complex espionage operation together, often risking the lives of his agents to achieve the results hewants.

Hans-Dieter Mundt

Hans-Dieter Mundt, the deputy director of operations for the East German intelligence community. A onetimeNazi, Mundt is a cruel, ruthless man who has brought about the death of several agents and is disliked andfeared even by his own people. He is also, as Leamas at last learns, a highly placed double agent working forthe British.

Fiedler

Fiedler, Mundt’s second-in-command and a committed Communist. Fiedler, too, is mistrusted by his ownpeople and is infamous among British agents for his savage interrogation techniques. Fiedler, a Jew, has longhated the anti-Semitic Mundt and sees Leamas as the key to his superior’s downfall.

Miss Crail

Miss Crail, the head librarian at the Bayswater Library for Psychic Research. Spinsterish, sour-tempered, anda stickler for details, Miss Crail takes an immediate dislike to Leamas, who spends a brief period working inthe library.

William Ashe

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William Ashe, a low-level Eastern bloc agent operating in England. The effete and homosexual Ashe firstmakes contact with Leamas regarding a possible defection.

Peters

Peters, Ashe’s superior. Peters is assigned to handle Leamas’ defection and to take him to East Berlin.

Karl Riemeck

Karl Riemeck, an East German official who has been acting as a British double agent. Riemeck is the lastsurviving member of Leamas’ Berlin network of spies. He is killed in the book’s opening pages as heattempts to cross over to the Western side.

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Characters

Le Carre is distinctive in his type of spy, an anti-James Bond type, no longer the super-spy. Alec Leamus, thehero of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, is a fifty-year-old professional, grown stale in espionage. He hasjust lost his final contact in East Germany as the novel opens, and he is not really sure of his reasons forremaining in the service. He has lost confidence in the machine in which he is operating. Consequently helives through many roles, convincingly. He "goes to seed, [becomes] a resentful, drunken wreck"; goes toprison; and, most dangerous of all, falls in love. He eventually receives an opportunity to denounce the EastGerman Mundt, and discovers the inhumanity and ruthlessness of the espionage world. Leamus is a series ofroles, of masks, suffering from the tension of contemporary society, uncommitted and disillusioned.

One of the few charming feminine characters in le Carre's world is Liz Gold, who "had large componentswhich seemed to hesitate between plainness and beauty." Naively enrolled in the Communist party, shecommits herself wholeheartedly toLeamus. Indirectly betrayed in both her allegiances, she suffers the irony of a world in which truth is hard tofind. Like her, the East German Fiedler, punished for being a Jew, places his confidence in communism. Hehas the material to prove the guilt of Mundt, but there is no place for clear-cut moral values in today'sinhuman world.

On the whole, characterization is not le Carre's strongest point. The people he creates are too abstract, toomuch identified with their ideas to emerge as truly human. They have no past, no families, no history. Theyare shadowy, yet they represent well the contemporary person, tired, confused, and uncommitted.

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Source: Great Characters in Literature, ©1998 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.



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Critical Essays


Critical Essays

Critical Context

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was John le Carré’s third novel and the one which established hisreputation. During a period when detective fiction and the novel of intrigue were enjoying renewedpopularity, le Carré brought to this form true artistry in the tradition of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Heis a master literary craftsman who excels both in characterization and in context. Leamas and Liz arethoroughly sympathetic figures who are ultimately betrayed by the organizations to which they have giventheir loyalty. They make the story work, and through them, the plot is carefully elaborated, carried forwardnot only by the suspense attending Leamas’ last mission but also by the moral tension building within a mantroubled by the ethical ambiguities of his ruthless vocation. Le Carré knows the world of the secret agent, andhis mixture of the mundane and the breathtaking is so beautifully balanced that the reader easily accepts thereality of the story.

Le Carré transcends the chase and escape motif of the usual spy novel and reaches into the depths of thehuman condition as shaped by the Cold War. Leamas and Liz are symbols of the times, caught up in the moralconfusions that touch everyone in the modern, ideological age. In fact, le Carré has described the Cold War asa debilitating sickness, weakening the ethical foundations of Western civilization. “We are in the process ofdoing things in defense of our society,” he once said, “which may very well produce a society which is notworth defending.” That conviction is perfectly demonstrated by the dispirited Leamas, who is the veryantithesis of the patriotic hero. Weak, unimportant and doubting himself, Leamas regains much of hishumanity even as he confronts the dehumanizing nature of his job. He and Liz are tortured souls, reaching outfor goodness in each other, finding betrayal at every turn. The poignancy here is remarkably spontaneous andentirely credible.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is regarded by many critics as the best espionage novel ever written.After its publication in 1964, le Carré confirmed his talents in the masterful trilogy focused on the unassumingGeorge Smiley, whose career is examined in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy(1977), and Smiley’s People (1980), each of which artfully explores the moral bankruptcy of the Cold War.The Little Drummer Girl (1983) treats sensitively yet graphically Palestinian terrorism, moving le Carré deepinto contemporary international politics, while A Perfect Spy (1986), his most autobiographical book to date,centers on a British agent’s painful relationship with his father. Yet The Spy Who Came in from the Coldremains le Carré’s classic, the book that went well beyond chills and thrills to literature of the first rank.

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Critical Evaluation

In the early 1960’s, there were two main types of spy fiction. One, exemplified by Ian Fleming’s JamesBond novels, concerned glamorous action and adventure. Indeed, by 1963, the Bond novels—and increasinglythe film adaptations based on them—were dominating spy fiction. The second type of spy novel is exemplifiedby the work of John le Carré, who was himself a former spy. This tradition focused more on the mundaneaspects of espionage and featured not larger-than-life super-spies, but the often tired and burned-out,mendacious little men who conduct real spying.

Intelligence organizations gather information; they play individuals against one another, along with theircountries. Espionage is all about playing games, using disguises, and assuming roles. The spy observes butmay not necessarily participate in events, subsuming his or her personal feelings to the operation andassuming whatever persona will help the cause.

Alec Leamas is a casualty of the Cold War, a used-up spy who has been out in the cold too long. With hisBerlin-based network in shambles, apparently because of the effective counterespionage work of the EastGerman Abteilung, he is adrift when he is recalled to headquarters in London. With this opening, le Carré setsup his breakthrough spy novel and establishes the approach he would follow in his subsequent novels thatexamine the moral parameters of the Cold War and its aftermath.

Leamas has been doing his country’s bidding so long that he has stopped asking the reasons or questioningthe morality of his actions. He believes in nothing more than doing the job. Le Carré portrays events that forceLeamas to confront not only his basic cynicism but also his detachment from other human beings. Thisconfrontation is brought about through his relationship with the young and vulnerable Liz Gold and throughhis philosophical discussions with Fiedler, his East German adversary.

Liz, Leamas’s fellow worker at the library, immediately exhibits a concern for him when he first comes towork. She offers him part of her lunch and later entertains him at her flat and cooks him meals. When hebecomes quite ill, she nurses him at his rooms and buys him costly foods and medicines. She even takes himinto her bed. Throughout their relationship, Leamas seemingly remains detached and within the role he isplaying for the Circus. He rarely talks to her and mocks her commitment to communism. He is astounded thatshe should be so naïve; she is equally astounded that he is so cynical.

Leamas’s discussions while a prisoner of the Abteilung with Fiedler further introduce this issue of moralcommitment, or lack of it, on Leamas’s part. Fiedler is shocked that Leamas has no overriding philosophicalpurpose that guides his life. The communist East German finds this a sign of the decadence of the West.

Leamas, as a representative of Western values, especially of the intelligence services, does seem morallybankrupt. In the novel, espionage—and all of the lives, money, and values that it wastes playing an essentiallyunwinnable game—reveals the essential similarity of both sides of the Cold War, each equally corrupt andequally futile in its actions. Leamas represents the degradation to which the idealism and heroism of WorldWar II have sunk.

With a solid record in both Holland and Norway during the war, Leamas is close to devolving into ahome-office manipulator, but he cannot quite go that far. Hidden under layers of alcohol, anger, andfrustration, there is still a remnant of something that demands that he avenge his lost network by gettingMundt. When it becomes apparent that he, and particularly Liz, has been manipulated by his superiors,Leamas does the right thing by surrendering his own life. It is a gesture, largely gratuitous, that neverthelessprovides a measure of redemption on his part. Perhaps in the end, Fiedler and—more so—Liz have penetratedhis thick skin of professional indifference to reach something basic underneath, and Alec Leamas becomes in

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his death a human being once more.

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Source: Critical Survey of Literature for Students, ©2010 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.



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Analysis


Analysis

Literary Techniques

As an espionage story, this work reveals all the labyrinthine intricacies of the profession of the spy. Indeveloping the plot, le Carre is able to withhold information from his readers and keep them in suspense. TheSpy Who Came in from the Cold has a remarkably simple plot, is not overburdened with characters, anddevelops in a linear fashion. Le Carre is sparing of description, although his own familiarity with Germany isevident. The Wall, which begins and ends the novel, is presented with starkness and strength, and becomesalmost a person.

Le Carre is a master of language. He is particularly gifted in the use of dialogue, often presented like anoverheard conversation. It is by dialogue more than by description that the characters reveal themselves. LeCarre is able to capture the naive questioning and unquestionable dedication of Liz, the cynical disgust ofLeamus, and the cunning of Mundt through the words they speak. His sentences are crisp and terse; hisvocabulary exact and creative.

The greatest asset of this novel is the change it brought to the typical espionage story. In contrast to thenineteenth-century figures, dedicated to the service of their country, le Carre has created a shadowy type, aprofoundly unhappy person with doubts about his profession. He shows espionage as a cruel, cold, and bitterbusiness. He evokes the political climate in the 1960s and the great postwar malaise with surprising clarityand intuition.

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Literary Precedents

As an espionage story, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and all of le Carre's works, with the possibleexception of The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971), belong to the tradition of Somerset Maugham, AuthurConan Doyle, and especially Graham Greene; although he has created a more restless, ambiguous hero. In theliterary world, he has echoes of Balzac, Stendhal, Dickens (especially Bleak House), and Henry James. JosephConrad is also one of his masters, especially in his later works.

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Adaptations

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was successfully filmed by Paramount in 1965, starring Richard Burton,who was nominated for an Academy Award for his brilliant portrayal. Le Carre has not participated in thefilming of any of his works, and remains generally detached from them.

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Bibliography (Critical Guide to British Fiction)

Adams, R. M. Review in The New York Review of Books. II (March 5, 1964), p. 13.

Boucher, Anthony. Review in The New York Times Book Review. L (January 12, 1964), p .5.

Palmer, Jerry. Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre, 1979.

Symons, Julian. Mortal Consequences: A History from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, 1973.

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