Summary Of Hunt For Red October By Tom Clancy

Clancy paints a picture of American society using a palette of western values, which together, formulate a sense of freedom and superiority over other world superpowers. In the U.S., as Clancy explains, the people have opportunities they can either pursue for personal and ultimately national benefit or let pass. In the light of a dangerous new mission, a high official gives a select group of intelligence officers the chance of a lifetime to be part of it (Clancy 425). Additionally, he explicitly states that the assignment is a “volunteer assignment,” and by helping, it would be a “dream job for an intelligence officer” (Clancy 425). Fundamentally, “volunteer” is the key word as it perfectly depicts what the value of American freedom encompasses.

Although Clancy does not mention his name, the president, takes strict positions against the Russians when addressing the Soviet Ambassador. Especially when the U.S. discovers a Soviet submarine extremely close to its shores, a violation of a stated agreement (Clancy 537). This fearlessness in regarding the Soviets comes from the increased freedom to do so. In conjunction, this drives powerful parallels between Clancy’s U.S. and the Reagan Administration. As regarded in the article Tom Clancy: “[T]he novel [Hunt for Red October] captured the spirit of the Cold War politics typical of the administration of President Ronald Reagan” (“Tom Clancy” 308). Reagan pursued a heavily anti-Soviet ideology designed at out-doing the Soviet Union is various areas such as military might (“Tom Clancy” 308). This is similar to how the U.S. approaches the Soviets in the novel, and the reader is able to sense the general disgust towards the Soviet Union as a whole. Further, Hixon, a literary critic, explains that Clancy helps to “reinforce American exceptionalism by demonizing both foreign enemies and domestic political foes, much as the Reagan administration did also” (Hixon 105). Understanding Reagan’s philosophy, Clancy creates a fictitious administration run by the same logic. By making innumerable comparisons to Reagan’s presidency, Clancy indirectly secures the United State’s