At the heart of his personality, Henry Perowne is a man of logic. He came “straight from school to medical school to the slavish hours of a junior doctor, then the total absorption of neurosurgery training spliced with committed fatherhood—for fifteen years he barely touched a non-medical book at all” (McEwan 4). For the last fifteen years, Henry Perowne has not had time for art and literature, because he has been working. Once Perowne has entered the mindset of his work, the mindset of a neurosurgeon, he finds himself “enmeshed in the direct and personal relations of ruler and ruled” (Weeks 2). However, instead of a physical person being placed over Perowne in order to govern his work, Perowne is ruled over by the logical mindset instilled
