#alec leamas

[azalearanger]

bro.... Alec Leamas....

(spoilers for TSWCIFTC)

absolutely tragic ending. He could have kept going!!! He could have lived he was so close!! But no. He chose to die with Liz. Man i just feel like he went through so much I just wanted him to live, he really gave it all and got only death in return. GUTTED.

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

the spy who came in from the cold, john le carre

[tinkertailorwriterspy]

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

[arielseaworth]

He met failure as one day he would probably meet death, with cynical resentment and the courage of a solitary. He'd lasted longer than most; now he was beaten.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carré)

[thegoodwhovian]

- Legacy of the Spy -

Novelist John le Carré alias David Cornwell. As I get older, he becomes an increasingly steady figure of intelligence, reason and reassurance in this wild age.

He has become, in many ways, his most famous character. George Smiley.

Sculpted in Super and Regular Sculpey

[shannybasar]

What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs ? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs ?

An example of the cynicism of Alec Leamas, who is at the heart of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It must have been incredible to read this espionage novel when it was first published in 1963, just two years after the Berlin Wall went up.

In my copy John le Carre has written an afterword - Fifty Years Later - which sums up why it it still relevant :

The novel’s merit, then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing, since it asked the same old question that we are asking ourselves fifty years later: how far can we go on the rightful defence of our Western values, without abandoning them along the way ? My fictional chief of the British Secret Service - I called him Control - had no doubt of the answer:

“I mean, you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now ?”

Today the same man, with better teeth and hair and a much smarter suit, can be heard explaining away the catastrophic illegal war in Iraq, or justifying medieval torture techniques as the preferred means of interrogation in the twenty-first century, or defending the inalienable right of closet psychopaths to bear semi-automatic weapons, and the use of unmanned drones as a risk-free method of assassinating one’s perceived enemies and anybody who has been the bad luck to be standing near them.

[the-syndic4te]

It was the first of many meals which Leamas had at her flat. He came when she asked him, and she asked him often. He never spoke much. When she discovered he would come, she took to laying the table in the morning before leaving for the library. She even prepared the vegetables beforehand and had the candles on the table, for she loved candlelight. She always knew that there was something deeply wrong with Leamas, and that one day, for some reason she could not understand, he might break and she would never see him again. She tried to tell him she knew; she said to him one evening: “You must go when you want. I’ll never follow you, Alec,” and his brown eyes rested on her for a moment: “I’ll tell you when,” he replied. Her flat was just a bed-sitting-room and a kitchen. In the sitting-room were two armchairs, a divan bed, and a bookcase full of paper-back books, mainly classics which she had never read. After supper she would talk to him, and he would lie on the divan, smoking. She never knew how much he heard, she didn’t care. She could kneel by the bed holding his hand against her cheek, talking. Then one evening she said to him: “Alec, what do you believe in? Don’t laugh—tell me.” She waited and at last he said: “I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas.” She seemed to consider this and at last she asked again: “But what do you believe in?” Leamas shrugged. “You must believe in something,” she persisted: “something like God—I know you do, Alec; you’ve got that look sometimes, as if you’d got something special to do, like a priest. Alec, don’t smile, it’s true.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Liz, you’ve got it wrong. I don’t like Americans and public schools. I don’t like military parades and people who play soldiers.” Without smiling he added, “And I don’t like conversations about Life.” “But, Alec, you might as well say—” “I should have added,” Leamas interrupted, “that I don’t like people who tell me what I ought to think.” She knew he was getting angry but she couldn’t stop herself anymore. “That’s because you don’t want to think, you don’t dare! There’s some poison in your mind, some hate. You’re a fanatic, Alec. I know you are, but I don’t know what about. You’re a fanatic who doesn’t want to convert people, and that’s a dangerous thing. You’re like a man who’s . . . sworn vengeance or something.” The brown eyes rested on her. When he spoke she was frightened by the menace in his voice. “If I were you,” he said roughly, “I’d mind my own business.” And then he smiled, a roguish smile. He hadn’t smiled like that before and Liz knew he was putting on the charm. “What does Liz believe in?” he asked, and she replied: “I can’t be had that easy, Alec.” Later that night they talked about it again. Leamas brought it up—he asked her whether she was religious. “You’ve got me wrong,” she said, “all wrong. I don’t believe in God.” “Then what do you believe in?” “History.” He looked at her in astonishment for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, Liz . . . oh no. You’re not a bloody Communist?” She nodded, blushing like a small girl at his laughter, angry and relieved that he didn’t care. She made him stay that night and they became lovers. He left at five in the morning. She couldn’t understand it; she was so proud and he seemed ashamed.

John le Carré “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”

[arielseaworth]

He knew what it was then that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England: it was the caring about little things—the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach, and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread for the seagulls or love, whatever it was he would go back and find it; he would make Liz find it for him.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (John le Carré)