John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

In the debut of John le Carre’s novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, there is a paradigm shift in the perspective on intelligence and espionage within popular culture. Gone are the days of heroic romanticism that came with characters like John Buchan’s Richard Hanay and Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Through morally ambiguous characters like Control and complex machinations that is Leamas’ mission, le Carre is establishing a systematic critique on the nature of intelligence agencies and their methods specifically in context of the Cold War. In a sense, the novel itself is anti-intelligence in theme, plot, and character. Specifically, the novel condemns the institution of intelligence as a whole to be dehumanizing of the people involved, immorality of its actions, and bereft of any ideological passion. In context, Leamas himself is presented as a cautionary tale of the gradual toll that intelligence takes on such individuals. As he is surveilling the Berlin Wall, his response to an inquisitive American agent is to “shut up.” Thus, he is characterized to be bitter, anti-social, and not receptive to personal interaction. This is further illustrated

The reasoning being is that these escapades were devoid of any adventure or romance. There were no handsome heroes who can overcome anything with great wit and gadgetry. The world that Leamas and Liz occupies is a world in which intelligence agencies have control over individuals to follow operations and protocols. Where intelligence is utilized to perpetuate itself rather than to prevent catastrophes or end wars. It is through this lens that le Carre critiques the whole notion of intelligence in the Cold War. In contrast to WWII, the intelligence work done within the Cold War and in le Carre’s novel was not to save the lives of soldiers or to multiply force. Rather, these intelligence agencies within the Cold War era seek to maintain the