In this Cold War espionage of a novel, the story probes the several ventures of the 1960s era and the abounding people involved in the devastating matter. Based in a divided Germany, Alec Leamas, the main character, is a British secret agent who becomes a double agent to try and undermine the head of the Communist intelligence agency in East Germany. Everything is going smoothly until Leamas discovers himself before a person that will do everything in their power to bring him to the light as a British spy. The story begins with Leamas as the head of the British Intelligence in West Germany, who checks and inspects the spy missions in East Berlin. When his agent, Karl Riemeck, is shot down crossing the border into West Berlin, Leamas goes back
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At the time of the “swinging” sixties, the Cold War was in full tact. Until the publication of the Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carré had written literally in secret, from inside the walls of the outside world, under a whole different name, and free of critical attention, which is totally ironic considering his main character was in a very similar situation. A historical significance I learned was that there was nothing good or precious about the hardships in which the Berlin Wall had brought, there were only disgust and terror. The Wall was all just a dreadful symbolization of how much of a monstrosity a crazy ideology could hold as baggage. The novel taught me that the Berlin Wall was a very serious matter which forced people to alter their lives for the …show more content…
These four quotes here, explain the key factors of the story and how it was a huge impact upon my reading. For the first quote, “We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?” (Control 15). So, "coming in from the cold" basically means sympathy rather than being fierce or hard as it may seem. Instead of coming in from the cold as a spy, Leamas does as a person and the destruction he was forced to endure may had seemed as a setback, but it only helped to better him. Through his death, Leamas in fact shows that he is a human being and not like any other “cold-hearted” spy. For the second quote, “This is a war," Leamas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all besides other wars - the last or the next” (Leamas 217). This explains exactly what Leamas thought about the war and his situation at hand. War is destined for bloodshed and death because that is what it was created for and it will remain like that for a long time. For the third quote, “The Party knows more about us than we know ourselves” (Carré 208). It describes that
At the time of the “swinging” sixties, the Cold War was in full tact. Until the publication of the Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carré had written literally in secret, from inside the walls of the outside world, under a whole different name, and free of critical attention, which is totally ironic considering his main character was in a very similar situation. A historical significance I learned was that there was nothing good or precious about the hardships in which the Berlin Wall had brought, there were only disgust and terror. The Wall was all just a dreadful symbolization of how much of a monstrosity a crazy ideology could hold as baggage. The novel taught me that the Berlin Wall was a very serious matter which forced people to alter their lives for the …show more content…
These four quotes here, explain the key factors of the story and how it was a huge impact upon my reading. For the first quote, “We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?” (Control 15). So, "coming in from the cold" basically means sympathy rather than being fierce or hard as it may seem. Instead of coming in from the cold as a spy, Leamas does as a person and the destruction he was forced to endure may had seemed as a setback, but it only helped to better him. Through his death, Leamas in fact shows that he is a human being and not like any other “cold-hearted” spy. For the second quote, “This is a war," Leamas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all besides other wars - the last or the next” (Leamas 217). This explains exactly what Leamas thought about the war and his situation at hand. War is destined for bloodshed and death because that is what it was created for and it will remain like that for a long time. For the third quote, “The Party knows more about us than we know ourselves” (Carré 208). It describes that