44 pages • 1 hour read
Graham GreeneA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Our Man in Havana was written during a time of great fear that the individual was being crushed by vast impersonal forces in society. Wormold’s experiences as a spy drive home the primary importance of the individual. He finds himself being used as a pawn in global political games, and he finds himself in turn doing the same with his invented “agents.” Speaking out at a Secret Service meeting, Beatrice says, “There’s something greater than one’s country” and that international organizations like NATO don’t mean anything different from the nations they claim to transcend. Secret Service employees do not care for “peace and justice and freedom” (225) but only for their careers.
Even outside of the spy world, Wormold experiences instances where the individual is degraded and sacrificed as means to an end. The heads of his company, Phastcleaners, decide to change the name of their main product regardless of how this might affect sales in places like Havana. They send him to work in Cuba, a place that is foreign to his sensibilities and needs. Spies break into Dr. Hasselbacher’s house and destroy his possessions to intimidate him. Hasselbacher speaks of human beings being reduced to names on index cards (72).
By Graham Greene
Brighton Rock
Graham Greene
Monsignor Quixote
Graham Greene
The Basement Room
Graham Greene
The Destructors
Graham Greene
The End Of The Affair
Graham Greene
The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene
The Quiet American
Graham Greene
The Third Man
Graham Greene
Appearance Versus Reality
View Collection
British Literature
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
Loyalty & Betrayal
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Nation & Nationalism
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Satire
View Collection