Betrayal In Le Carre

John Le Carré’s novels turn on themes of betrayal. He contrasts private morality and public accountability, thought and action, duty and love, and ideological commitment and personal betraya. He mixes characters’ interjections, opinions, and insider’s information into sometimes confusingly sequenced dialogues. Double agents are le Carré’s primary vehicles for exploring spiritual and moral bankruptcy. They serve two masters but are true too neither controllers nor themselves. Their assignments reproduce the perpetual disloyalties endemic in most human relationships. Treason is nurtured into habit and inevitably kills the human spirit.