Thursday, December 13, 2018

How are politics and identity examined in "Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene?

Set in Cuba during the Cold War, Our Man in Havana is a satire of espionage novels. It was published in 1958, just a few months before Fidel Castro took power, and the action takes place in the pre-revolutionary era. The protagonist, James Wormold, is a British man living in Havana with his teenage daughter. He is recruited to spy for the British Intelligence Service because the British are concerned about a potential Soviet-backed insurgency and anxious to get the scoop on American intelligence. Although Wormold considers himself a patriotic Briton, he has not taken a political position regarding the Batista regime. He agrees to spy for his country partly out of patriotism and partly for the money.
Wormold soon faces a dilemma. He is the owner and manager of a vacuum cleaner sales and repair establishment and is not actually connected into any political circles. He invents a network of agents and cobbles together random events to fill up his reports. As the agency’s demands increase, Wormold’s ingenuity and desperation combine into a stroke of brilliance. He adds diagrams of supposed military installations and weaponry that are secretly located in the countryside. In fact, they are the schematic diagrams of the vacuum cleaners.
Graham Greene depicts his hero as stereotypically British in numerous ways. He is a patriot who wants to help advance not just democracy, but his country’s cause. As he is mild-tempered and prefers not to make waves, he finds it easier to tell the agents what he thinks they want to hear. A bit arrogant as well, he assumes that he is clever enough to fool them with his false reports. At the same time, his individual identity as a perplexed but devoted father is emphasized, justifying his continued presence on the island.
Devoting relatively little attention to the problems of the Batista government, Greene uses the political strife that was brewing in Cuba largely as background. (Castro himself apparently criticized this aspect of the book.) A Cuban military officer who courts Wormold’s daughter initially seems pompous but not very bright or particularly menacing. The plot gets complicated as real enemy agents start to turn up and present real danger. London headquarters sends a female agent to check out his stories. A Soviet agent kills Wormold’s friend, forcing him to become the person he has been pretending to be, including outsmarting the Cuban officer. As things unravel, the satirical aspects grow stronger. Greene’s own disillusionment with British Intelligence (for which he formerly worked) is shown as London headquarters, to save face, decides not to expose Wormold’s deception and prosecute him, but instead give him a promotion and recommend him for knighthood.
https://books.google.com/books?id=czI2DwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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