It's All In George's Head
Dec. 10th, 2018 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
are_youready Now, Johnboy has... let's call them archetypes, in his work. Perhaps "idiosyncratic personal tropes" is more accurate. The most important of these, I would argue, is an archetype I like to call The Man. Now, The Man is a character, but his relationship to the protagonist is also an aspect of the archetype. He is a limping dark eyed slender diminutive charismatic Byronic attractive sexually ambiguous promiscuous suffering-under-the-state ex-lutheran or atheist Jewish German true-believing zealous socialist, but he is also most importantly the protagonist's fraught friend-nemesis. Now, there are different levels of that: Sasha is Teddy's friend who is also kind of a dick and keeps dragging Teddy into dumbass bullshit; Karla is George's nemesis who intentionally ruined his marriage and polluted the Circus and who George is obsessed with in a way that can sometimes reasonably qualify as hatred, at least in Smiley's People.
I would consider Axel H. in A Perfect Spy to be the most accurate depiction of the archetype of The Man, and I generally consider him to be the basic template which all other iterations deviate from. He was written later than most other iterations, true, but the combination of 1) the fact that he carries the most "The Man" archetypal traits of any of them, 2) the fact that his arc seems to kind of be what the others were portraying with the details changed, and 3) most importantly, the heavy autobiographicality of A Perfect Spy, cause me to still consider him to be the template.
Among other things, taking Axel as the template helps to explain Smiley's relationship with Karla.
First, I'm going to give a short summary of the relevant aspects of Axel H. and Magnus Pym (the protagonist of APS)'s relationship. This post assumes you have read TTSS; it does not assume you have read A Perfect Spy.
Axel and Magnus begin as friends. Their relationship has something of a mentor/mentee tone, certainly, and Magnus is definitely looking for a father in Axel, but then, Magnus looks for a father in everyone. And of course there is a strong, practically explicit erotic undercurrent: "Magnus was even less sure of Axel's sexuality than his own, except that whatever it was Axel was at peace with it," Magnus's jealousy over Axel's harem of girls taking Axel's attention away from himself, etc. But they are not significantly more complex than friends at this point. They're just a couple of runaway, parentless young men who happen to be lodging in the same house in Switzerland.
However, Magnus is a naive, pliable idiot, desperate for the approval of any father figure he can find; when British intelligence scoops him up, he cheerfully recounts Axel's entire biography to them without even realizing what he might be doing, and the police come for Axel, an illegal immigrant and a socialist, in the night. Axel is deported back to Czecho and Magnus believes he will never see him again.
But they do see each other again. Nearly a decade later, when Magnus is an up and coming young spy, someone gets in contact with his network, claiming to have information. That someone turns out to be Axel H., now an officer of Soviet intelligence after years of imprisonment, torture, and starvation at their hands and, by extension, Magnus's. Axel suggests that since, you know, neither of us really believe in our countries' overarching causes, but we do care about each other, we could advance each other's careers by swapping information. Magnus, naive, stupid, desperate for Axel's approval, overjoyed that Axel is alive, and carrying years of crushing guilt over Axel's supposed fate, agrees instantaneously. And so begins Magnus's tenure as the greatest traitor fictional British Intelligence ever harbored in its ranks.
The Axel who runs Magnus is a different, harder, darker Axel than the one who was Magnus's cool older friend in college. He has suffered a lot, and he has done terrible things. It's left up in the air whether turning Magnus into a traitor is an intentional act of revenge on Axel's part, but the possibility is highlighted, and running Magnus certainly involves a lot of vicious manipulation and control. Axel still loves Magnus, yes, but he is very very angry at how Magnus betrayed him, and he is also a good officer, he knows how to run an agent. At the end, Axel cares for Magnus, but he is also Magnus's enemy, because Magnus hurt him.
What does this have to do with Smiley and Karla?
Karla, too, is an instance of The Man. The interesting thing is that he is an instance of The Man who exists essentially entirely inside George's mind. Of course, there is a real person using the codename Karla, running moles, keeping George's lighter in his pocket. But the person George formed a relationship with in that Delhi jail cell - and the person he blames for ruining his marriage and his life - are a construct. A projection. And what's interesting is that he projects Axel's exact emotional arc onto Karla.
First, the betrayal: George fails to convince "Gerstmann" to defect. This is tantamount to leaving him to die, in George's estimation; an unforgivable sin. Gerstmann's fate is sealed, or so he thinks. And this is George's fault. Now, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense from an outside perspective, but remember: George has just finished having an entire mental breakdown in Gerstmann's general direction out of loneliness and exhaustion. Later, he calls it a "communion between damaged souls," which I would call hilarious but also appropriate to the level of emotional significance he places on this moment. His emotions aren't coherent and they're not actually about anything around him, but they're strong and they're making themselves known and so he fucking imprints on "Gerstmann" like a duckling. And so it becomes a great betrayal of a dear friend that he fails to convince this random Centre operative, one of a long line of many, to defect.
Second, the start of darkness: George still seems to carry around some nostalgia for "Gerstmann," a character he invented for himself to soothe his desperate loneliness and used Karla's face for. Even when he speaks about how much he hates "Karla," "Gerstmann" remains someone to be longed for. George essentially splits Karla into two people, and I intuit, though I don't necessarily have evidence for this idea, that somewhere in George's brain is the idea that by "betraying" "Gerstmann" he created "Karla." Even though that's stupid and nonsensical and George knows in his mind it isn't true. This is supported by the whole situation with Ann and the lighter: anyone could have told Karla that George's weakness was Ann, that isn't exactly a big fucking secret. But the way it's emphasized suggests that George's behavior on that day made Karla the (homewrecking) monster he is today implies that George thinks of Delhi as the point where Karla went bad, in the same way as when Axel became a spy.
Third, and final, the manipulative revenge: Ann. Ann Ann Ann Ann Ann. The fact that Karla had Bill fuck Ann to mess with George's emotions is, well, obviously it's manipulation, and extremely successful manipulation at that. But George seems to think of it as revenge, as well; note how he kind of paints himself as deserving it because he spilled his guts in Delhi.
This is the missing link I've been looking for wrt. how George thinks about Delhi, and why Karla even counts as The Man. George didn't just have a mental breakdown at and fall a little in love with a blank slate because of desperate loneliness, he also blames himself for the ensuing... everything... in a very specific way.
I would consider Axel H. in A Perfect Spy to be the most accurate depiction of the archetype of The Man, and I generally consider him to be the basic template which all other iterations deviate from. He was written later than most other iterations, true, but the combination of 1) the fact that he carries the most "The Man" archetypal traits of any of them, 2) the fact that his arc seems to kind of be what the others were portraying with the details changed, and 3) most importantly, the heavy autobiographicality of A Perfect Spy, cause me to still consider him to be the template.
Among other things, taking Axel as the template helps to explain Smiley's relationship with Karla.
First, I'm going to give a short summary of the relevant aspects of Axel H. and Magnus Pym (the protagonist of APS)'s relationship. This post assumes you have read TTSS; it does not assume you have read A Perfect Spy.
Axel and Magnus begin as friends. Their relationship has something of a mentor/mentee tone, certainly, and Magnus is definitely looking for a father in Axel, but then, Magnus looks for a father in everyone. And of course there is a strong, practically explicit erotic undercurrent: "Magnus was even less sure of Axel's sexuality than his own, except that whatever it was Axel was at peace with it," Magnus's jealousy over Axel's harem of girls taking Axel's attention away from himself, etc. But they are not significantly more complex than friends at this point. They're just a couple of runaway, parentless young men who happen to be lodging in the same house in Switzerland.
However, Magnus is a naive, pliable idiot, desperate for the approval of any father figure he can find; when British intelligence scoops him up, he cheerfully recounts Axel's entire biography to them without even realizing what he might be doing, and the police come for Axel, an illegal immigrant and a socialist, in the night. Axel is deported back to Czecho and Magnus believes he will never see him again.
But they do see each other again. Nearly a decade later, when Magnus is an up and coming young spy, someone gets in contact with his network, claiming to have information. That someone turns out to be Axel H., now an officer of Soviet intelligence after years of imprisonment, torture, and starvation at their hands and, by extension, Magnus's. Axel suggests that since, you know, neither of us really believe in our countries' overarching causes, but we do care about each other, we could advance each other's careers by swapping information. Magnus, naive, stupid, desperate for Axel's approval, overjoyed that Axel is alive, and carrying years of crushing guilt over Axel's supposed fate, agrees instantaneously. And so begins Magnus's tenure as the greatest traitor fictional British Intelligence ever harbored in its ranks.
The Axel who runs Magnus is a different, harder, darker Axel than the one who was Magnus's cool older friend in college. He has suffered a lot, and he has done terrible things. It's left up in the air whether turning Magnus into a traitor is an intentional act of revenge on Axel's part, but the possibility is highlighted, and running Magnus certainly involves a lot of vicious manipulation and control. Axel still loves Magnus, yes, but he is very very angry at how Magnus betrayed him, and he is also a good officer, he knows how to run an agent. At the end, Axel cares for Magnus, but he is also Magnus's enemy, because Magnus hurt him.
What does this have to do with Smiley and Karla?
Karla, too, is an instance of The Man. The interesting thing is that he is an instance of The Man who exists essentially entirely inside George's mind. Of course, there is a real person using the codename Karla, running moles, keeping George's lighter in his pocket. But the person George formed a relationship with in that Delhi jail cell - and the person he blames for ruining his marriage and his life - are a construct. A projection. And what's interesting is that he projects Axel's exact emotional arc onto Karla.
First, the betrayal: George fails to convince "Gerstmann" to defect. This is tantamount to leaving him to die, in George's estimation; an unforgivable sin. Gerstmann's fate is sealed, or so he thinks. And this is George's fault. Now, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense from an outside perspective, but remember: George has just finished having an entire mental breakdown in Gerstmann's general direction out of loneliness and exhaustion. Later, he calls it a "communion between damaged souls," which I would call hilarious but also appropriate to the level of emotional significance he places on this moment. His emotions aren't coherent and they're not actually about anything around him, but they're strong and they're making themselves known and so he fucking imprints on "Gerstmann" like a duckling. And so it becomes a great betrayal of a dear friend that he fails to convince this random Centre operative, one of a long line of many, to defect.
Second, the start of darkness: George still seems to carry around some nostalgia for "Gerstmann," a character he invented for himself to soothe his desperate loneliness and used Karla's face for. Even when he speaks about how much he hates "Karla," "Gerstmann" remains someone to be longed for. George essentially splits Karla into two people, and I intuit, though I don't necessarily have evidence for this idea, that somewhere in George's brain is the idea that by "betraying" "Gerstmann" he created "Karla." Even though that's stupid and nonsensical and George knows in his mind it isn't true. This is supported by the whole situation with Ann and the lighter: anyone could have told Karla that George's weakness was Ann, that isn't exactly a big fucking secret. But the way it's emphasized suggests that George's behavior on that day made Karla the (homewrecking) monster he is today implies that George thinks of Delhi as the point where Karla went bad, in the same way as when Axel became a spy.
Third, and final, the manipulative revenge: Ann. Ann Ann Ann Ann Ann. The fact that Karla had Bill fuck Ann to mess with George's emotions is, well, obviously it's manipulation, and extremely successful manipulation at that. But George seems to think of it as revenge, as well; note how he kind of paints himself as deserving it because he spilled his guts in Delhi.
This is the missing link I've been looking for wrt. how George thinks about Delhi, and why Karla even counts as The Man. George didn't just have a mental breakdown at and fall a little in love with a blank slate because of desperate loneliness, he also blames himself for the ensuing... everything... in a very specific way.
no subject
on 2018-12-11 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-11 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-11 11:06 pm (UTC)omfg I'm laughing so hard. It's true! Le Carre what went on in your life.
>Later, he calls it a "communion between damaged souls," which I would call hilarious but also appropriate to the level of emotional significance he places on this moment.
YES. Oh Smiley. He's too sincere for his own good. Also iirc he was also a bit touched by a malarial fever, which I felt sort of absolved him of the worst parts of his decision making here, but also compounded that personal element. He was in general in a very vulnerable state.
>Second, the start of darkness: George still seems to carry around some nostalgia for "Gerstmann," a character he invented for himself to soothe his desperate loneliness and used Karla's face for.
This is so interesting, and speaks to a real sort of duplicity that is often found in the world of scouting and running agents. Even in intelligence, people can be stubborn, stupid, truculent, and just plain willfully abstruse. But then also as an officer you're responsible for them, and you're the one that opened the door of punitive measures for them to begin with if it's ever found out, so there's an element of innate human frailty that at Smiley's age he's more wont to recognize than the former clump of traits.
>The fact that Karla had Bill fuck Ann to mess with George's emotions is, well, obviously it's manipulation, and extremely successful manipulation at that.
I do wonder about this, and how personal Karla meant for this all to get. We never really hear anything from Karla's side; he's a cipher, and the closest we get is Bill postulating what Karla intended
no subject
on 2018-12-11 11:31 pm (UTC)I think about this a lot, actually. I really like the idea that none of it on Karla's side was personal, that George invented a friend for himself out of whole cloth because he was lonely and sad and vulnerable, then turned that friend into a nemesis because he needed a villain for his awful life, and he needed a way to explain the intense depths of the emotions he felt.
The problem is, that isn't actually supported by the text, because of the lighter. You don't keep a random enemy officer's lighter on your person for twenty years unless it's personal somehow. I like to imagine that the obsession is reciprocal? Because I sort of want it to be all or nothing, for Karla to either be essentially a figment of George's imagination, or to be exactly what George wants him to be? But there isn't really good evidence for ANY interpretation of Karla because he is so very blank of a slate.
I also wonder if you can reasonably bring earlier Smiley novels to bear on this interpretation, specifically CFTD, because like. the Smiley series doesn't have a very consistent canon? So it feels like cheating to analyze them in relation to each other, aside from like, the Karla trilogy and duologies-in-all-but-name like CFTD/MOQ and Spy Who/LGW. However, Dieter Frey is also an instance of The Man and I wonder if George might be projecting Dieter onto Karla.
YEAH. Like, George was having a whole breakdown, and like. It probably would not have gotten to the point it did without physical factors. Fever, probably (knowing George) lack of sleep, stress, what have you. Like he was at PEAK irrational vulnerability.
Anyway, hey, you seem very interested in this sort of thing. I have a le Carre discord server, want an invite?
no subject
on 2018-12-11 11:48 pm (UTC)>then turned that friend into a nemesis because he needed a villain for his awful life, and he needed a way to explain the intense depths of the emotions he felt.
To different degrees, Smiley does this with SO MANY people who are important in his life. Bill, Control, Ann. In different ways, of course, because none of them were so "blank" as what Karla was to Smiley. Smiley saw someone who reminded him of himself, aimed for relatable and ended up a tad too invested.
And the lighter! Again, he's such a cipher. Why Karla? Didn't Connie say he seemed a good sort? (Am I misremembering?) Maybe he's predisposed to sentimentality or nostalgia the way Smiley is, and George left an impression on him. The too earnest Englishman sweating under a tropical fever out of place for the locale.
Shamefully I admit to not having read outside TTSS bc Jim Prideaux was what got me invested in the first place. I do love me some traumatized intelligence workers?