Examples Of Nihilism In The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Nihilism in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carré, takes place in a historically gloomy period when rationing was a recent memory, the Berlin Wall stood tall and the sixties hadn’t yet started to swing. We are introduced to Alec Leamas, a burned-out spy drafted into a final mission; masquerading as a defector to the Communist German Democratic Republic. Le Carré’s 1963 novel presented us with a bleak version of the world: a world in which both the British and Communists play games with individual lives and willingly sacrifice one for many. Its unremittingly dark tone is characterized by the protagonist, Leamas, who gradually goes through more psychological and spiritual deformity as the novel progresses. Through the figure of …show more content…
Liz and Leamas attempt to escape over the Wall, but the guards quickly shoot Liz in order to avert suspicion, giving the impression that they attempted to stop the two “escapees”. In his work Murder and Loyalty, George Grella reflects on Leamas’s decision to allow himself to be killed rather than escape to safety. He highlights that Leamas “discovers that both his love and loyalty have been betrayed by an intricate British plot”, and as a result, Leamas is “sickened…he rejects the alliance and turns back…He comes in from the cold only by choosing to die at the foot of the Berlin Wall, the only way out of his underworld.” He contends that Leamas’ decision to accept death is not an act of individualism, but rather a decision to reject everything in the world. Leamas admits to Liz that the result of the operation makes him “sick with shame and anger” and that it was a “foul, foul operation” (p.g. 215). We can see that Leamas has lost faith in humanity. He recognizes that morality does not matter to those protecting their own national security. He is disillusioned and disgusted with the world, and cannot find any meaning in what is