The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Character Analysis

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John Le Carré’s novel; The Spy Who Came In From The Cold; takes us through the last mission of the British Intelligence officer; Alec Leamas; as he tries to stop the deputy director of the East German Intelligence; Mundt. There are many twists and turns as the truth comes out about the mission and the real reason why Leamas was apart of the mission. Alec Leamas fails to separate his personal beliefs and his emotions from his job as a spy which leads to his downfall.
Alec Leamas efforts to separate his personal beliefs from his new character’s beliefs made him start to lose himself in the process. Leamas’ beliefs are different from his Service’s, but he still follows them anyways by creating a new identity for his mission. Leamas feels that …show more content…

When Control starts talking to Leamas about Mundt, Control says, “He is a very distasteful man. Ex- Hitler Youth and all that kind of thing. Not at all the intellectual kind of Communist. A practitioner of the cold war” (17). Leamas goes on to reply, “Like us” (17). Leamas knows that all the British Intelligence can think about is winning the Cold War, but Leamas is starting to give up on the war. His last agent was just killed and everybody thought he was “put on the shelf”. When he agrees to go on the last mission, it would be one of his downfalls since he knew personally he wasn’t ready to continue to stay in the “cold”. Then, he had to create a new identity to protect himself in the mission. However, he knew that he was losing himself by changing it. “Similarly Leamas, without relinquishing the power of invention, identified himself with what he had invented” (130)”. He was now a man who was always drunk and poor. “[...] Hence also the sight dragging of the feet, the aspect of personal neglect, the indifference to food, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and tobacco. When alone, he remained faithful to these habits. He would even exaggerate them a

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