When we freeze, we die
Rogan Jacobson, Xavier College
In a period of history marked by such strong ideological warfare, why are the
cold-warrior protagonists in Greene and Le Carrs novels such ideologically
bankrupt creatures?
In a period of history marked by such strong
ideological warfare, why are the cold-warrior
protagonists in Greene and Le Carrs work such
ideologically bankrupt creatures? For the Cold War
ideologue, the ends always justified the means.
Although many local conflicts occurred involving
allies of the USA and USSR, their armies never faced
each other directly; global nuclear world war did not
happen and victory for the allies meant merely the
economic collapse not the destruction, conquering,
bombing or invasion of the USSR (while China and
Cuba continued to rise). Indeed, as the Hobsbawm
notes, instead of global conflict, a strange peace
was forged: the peculiarity of the Cold War was
that, speaking objectively, no imminent danger of
world war existed1. For Le Carr and Greene, the
ideological battlefronts of the Cold War are not
black and white instead we have an ever-rumbling
miasma of grey2 a world of spies, secrets, espionage
and immoral interference in the everyday lives of
largely peaceful people.
Lets start by looking closely at the protagonists
of two texts: the British journalist Thomas Fowler
in Graham Greenes The Quiet American (Quiet
American) and the British double-agent Alec Leamas
in Le Carrs The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
(Spy) to research the extent to which Cold War
ideologies are noticeably absent in the construction
of these protagonists. It is reaction to these
ideologies which is used by Greene and Le Carr
as a critical tool of characterisation. The uniquely
British perspective on the ideological climate
provides a context for the rich characterisation
of both protagonists by Greene and Le Carr,
often constructed in direct opposition to their
more ideological foils with whom their fates are
intertwined.
Written almost a decade apart and set in opposite
corners of the world, Quiet American and Spy have
much in common. Both offer a particularly British
perspective on different theatres of the Cold War.
Both follow closely the exploits of an old British Cold
Warrior at the end of their career (one a journalist
and one a spy), both explore the morality of how the
combatants actually fight the Cold War and both are
set in highly volatile battlefronts of that war, being
published while their contemporary subjects were
English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013
Eastern death zone, Berlin 1968. Source: Wikimedia Commons
still hotly contested. Greenes novel was written and
published in 1955, the year after the Geneva Accords
were signed dividing Vietnam and four months after
the Warsaw Pact was formed3. It is based heavily
on Greenes journalistic career from 195154.
Interestingly, the name is drawn from a quote by
one of Britains most famous traitors, the KGB
double agent Kim Philby4. Le Carr published Spy
in September 1963 and wrote the novel in Germany
literally while spying for the British5. By 1963 Kim
Philby had defected to the East, the Berlin Wall had
just seen its two-year anniversary, the US had over
17,000 troops embroiled in the Vietnam War and
Kennedy was drawing up plans for a retreat6. Spy
came out barely a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis
nearly brought the world to nuclear war and a mere
eight weeks before President Kennedy, he of Ich
Bin Ein Berliner7 fame, was shot in Dallas. As with
the Quiet American, Spy is set within a few years of
publication, and the action revolves around a British
espionage plot to infiltrate the East Berlin secret
police, or Abteilung, to protect a valuable source.
Interestingly, both authors write on the Cold War
from the particular perspective of the expert. Both
Greene8 and Le Carr 9 were Cold War spies in their
own right, and Greene was very experienced war
correspondent. Indeed, as Greene notes, there was
more direct reportage in the Quiet American than in
any other novel I have written.10 Le Carr too lived
the world of his protagonist, and was there when
the Berlin Wall went up; he recalls standing there,
staring back at the weasel faces of the brainwashed

When we freeze, we die
little thugs who guarded the Kremlins latest
battlement.11
To explore how Greene and Le Carr present
their ideological battlegrounds, let us turn to the
setting of both novels. There are many similarities
between the physical setting and charged moral
atmosphere surrounding protagonists Fowler and
Leamas. Both novels are set in war-ravaged foreign
countries, Vietnam and Germany, which became key
battlegrounds in the Cold War. These settings would
be relatively alien to a British readership, and reflect
the global reach of these ideological battlefronts.
Binary metaphors of light/dark and warm/cold are
employed by both novelists to directly characterise
their protagonists, with both novels starting and
finishing at night where the darkness conveys a rich
symbolism of secrecy, evil, and immorality. For our
protagonists, integrity and humanity become the
enemies, for the integrity of individuals must be
subverted before they will betray secrets.12
Quiet American starts and finishes on the same
night as it is told, largely in flashback and recount.
Key events all happen in the dead of night; such
Pyles death13, the events at Phat Diem and Pyle
saving Fowlers life. Nights in Quiet American see
heavy drinking, brothels visited, opium smoked,
murders committed and lives betrayed. Spy also
opens and closes at night on the Berlin Wall under
the glare of arc lighting14. It is at night that beatings
and torture happen and at night that all of the most
significant deaths occur. Similarly, both novels begin
and end with allied spies being brutally executed
by communists Pyle in Quiet American and Karl
and Leamas in Spy. And both start and finish in the
same physical place: Quiet American with Fowler
at his home over the rue Catinat the night Pyle is
assassinated, and Spy with Leamas at the empty
stage of the Berlin Wall, firstly to fail, then finally
to die. The global political associations surrounding
each physical setting would resonate strongly with
the British reader. These settings serve to drop the
reader in res into the local battlegrounds of the
Cold War in all its bloody glory,
enforcing the common tropes
of espionage and murder from
the very beginning of the novels.
Finally, both novelists extensively
use weather to explore ideological
forces in the construction of their
protagonists.
Rich in fire and heat imagery, Quiet
1990 Kim Philby, commemorated on a Soviet postage stamp.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
 English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013
American is told in the first person and mainly in
flashback. The novel reads like Fowlers confession,
starting and finishing on the hot evening Pyle is
assassinated. The heat around Fowler increases as
the novel progresses, reaching boiling point as the
novel reaches crisis the night Pyle is killed, where it
was too hot in bed and Fowler is metaphorically
woken up from a postcolonial sleep to begin his
new life with Phuong (a name meaning Phoenix in
Vietnamese). Whenever we meet the American cold
war ideologue Pyle, however, he is followed by cold
symbolism. The first time Pyle meets Phuong, it was
a momentary cool ; when Pyle tracks Fowler down
in Phat Diem, cold dominates despite the flames
and a cold wind ruffled the straw of the yard . That
night, before Pyle declares his love for Phuong, the
temperature was only a degree above zero and again
when Pyle and Fowler are trapped in the tower, Pyle
reminds us its going to be quite chilly .
As the events progress and Fowlers anger at Pyle and
what he represents begins to rise, the atmosphere
heats up. Fowlers first meeting with Heng is
surrounded by heat imagery: when Dominguez sends
Fowler to meet the communists, sweat is pouring
down his face, but he just let it run as though the
drops were alive and sacred ; as Fowler waits to meet
them drinking tea the heat scorched my fingers.
When Fowler starts to argue with Pyle over his
divorce, it was a hot afternoon. Heat, then, becomes
symbolic of a reaction to the cold ideologies of the
USA, and its robotic approach to human life.
Ideas of cold are explored further when an angry
and fired up Fowler goes to the American Legion
to rail against Pyle and ends up crying in their
bathroom, leaning against the cold wall and
presently the temperate tempered air dried my tears
as it dries the spit in your mouth and the seed in
your body. Greene here uses the metaphor of the
air that has been tampered with in the American
Legion, where Pyle works, using the alliteration of
temperate tempered to stress robotic precision,
showing the truly inhuman nature of American cold
war ideology. By use of this metaphor, it is as though
the very buildings occupied by Americans exude all
the unnatural horrors of the Cold War: they dry spit
or refuse to allow passionate debate; they dry tears
through machines not empathy, and they dry the
seed in your body killing off all real human passion
in the face of the artificial or theoretical. At the crisis
of the novel Fowler is surrounded by heat symbolism
from the hot morning of the bombing through the
warm evening chat with Pyle in a flat full of droning
summer mosquitoes to Pyles nighttime assassination
When we freeze, we die
Attack on the US Embassy, Saigon at the time of the Tet Offensive. Source: Wikimedia Commons
while Fowler is eating at a restaurant in the
heavy evening heat symbolism which continues
through the dnouement of the novel, as Fowler is
interviewed by Detective Vigot.
Like Greene, cold for Le Carr also symbolises
a world ruled by ends justifying means ideology.
An inhuman and immoral atmosphere, the Cold
War diegesis of his novel is a place where Nazis are
helped to execute Jews, love is betrayed and allies
executed all in the name of ideology. Leamas
lives permanently out in the cold physically and
metaphorically. As a professional spy, he is a paper
figure15 who exists in a moral near-death state16.
Cold imagery follows Leamas for the entire novel.
When we first meet him at night on the Wall, he is
being buffeted by the Icy October wind drinking
liquor to keep warm, foreshadowing the brutal
ending of the novel, as the reader discovers that,
despite a newfound love for Liz, Leamas will not be
allowed to warm up, will not come in from the cold
and he will not start a new life. For Le Carr, the
distance from normal human relations a spy must
maintain to protect himself and his secrets is seen
metaphorically as distance from humanity and, as
Martin notes, spies become enmeshed in an infernal
web of lies and deceit and treachery.17 When Leamas
is brought in to London after the death of Karl, he is
English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013
instructed to stay out in the cold a little longer. This
atmosphere recurs at every key event for Leamas in
the novel: when he walks home after his first day at
work in the library it is bitterly cold outside ; when
Liz finds him near death it was bitterly cold in the
room, and dark; and when he leaves Controls final
briefing he slips out into the cold . It was cold the
morning Leamas begins his mission, cold but clear
his first morning of interrogation with Fiedler, his
feet were icy cold the morning after Mundt tortures
him and finally as he and Liz escape to the Wall,
Le Carr tells us that a full moon had risen and the
frost hovered in long shrouds across the fields. The
character of Leamas, then, is characterised in direct
opposition to life, to warmth, to the normal human
ties that bond. Metaphors of heat and cold, and the
choice to engage in the passions of love and life, to
rebel against the cold world of ideology come to
typify Greene and Le Carrs construction of their
protagonists.
The attitude of both British novelists towards
Cold War ideologues is one of cynicism and moral
outrage at their secrecy18 and methodologies.
Leamas and Fowler actively deride the Cold War
ideologies where ends justify means philosophies
are espoused by the leaders around them to achieve
the distant philosophical ends of defending

When we freeze, we die

against an expansionist revolutionary power19 on

one side and defending international socialism,
fending of rapacious capitalists20 on the other. This
philosophy is articulated early in Spy when Control
tells Leamas that you cant be less ruthless than the
opposition simply because your governments policy
is benevolent. Our protagonists, however, espouse
no philosophies of their own. For them, Cold War
ideologies are dangerous lunacies that one must
guard against. Leamas voices the notion that these
ideologies are a form of global moral insanity: Its
mankind thats gone mad . Leamas blurs the lines
between good and bad ideologies, and teaches
us that there is no difference between these two
worlds.21 Leamas sentiments are directly echoed by
Le Carr years later, when he wrote an open letter to
Russia in which he says there is no victory and no
virtue in the Cold War, only a condition of human
illness and a political misery22 Greene voices similar
opinions on these ideologies when Fowler tells Pyle:
They (the Vietnamese) dont believe in anything
either. You and your like are trying to make a war
with the help of people who just arent interested
Isms and ocracies. Give me facts. For Fowler,
ideologies of isms and ocracies are to be avoided at
all costs and he prides himself on being degag, or
not involved. As Fowler tells Vigot early on, I wrote
what I saw, I took no action even an opinion is a
kind of action.
Both novelists express Cold War ideologies through
character foils in their work, but they seem to have
no power in the life of their protagonists23. Leamas
describes ideology as a sort of badge, given to
higher officers who live further away from the day-
to-day fighting, and he describes the process of his
interrogation by more senior figures as a metaphor
for a progression in ideology. This sentiment is earlier
echoed by Greenes portrayal of Pyle as an American
literalist, who reads assiduously and profoundly in
history and politics because he believes in being
involved, but who overwrites eyewitness accounts
with the words of Yorks textbooks.24 Fowler and
Leamas are very experienced men who have seen
much suffering and cruelty over their lives and who
initially rail at naivet and innocence. As Fowler tells
Pyle, Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his
bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
However, in both men it is precisely a resurgence
of innocence or humanity which reconnects them
to the lives of real people, freeing them from the
cold theoretical grip of ideology. When Fowler first
meets Pyle, he immediately teases him, and the
American ideology he symbolises, for his innocence,
John Le Carr. Source: Wikimedia Commons
pointing out that even though Pyle had just arrived
in Vietnam, he was absorbed already in the
dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of
the West determined to do good to a country,
a continent, a world. Similarly, ideologues of
all stripes are mercilessly teased in Spy. At the
opening of the novel Leamas is being questioned
by a nameless American CIA operative who
appears to know nothing at all about tradecraft.
When the American finally leaves, Leamas asks
the older German police where the CIA man has
gone and receives the reply Bed time. Later on in
the novel, when Liz confesses to Leamas that she
is a communist, he bursts into laughter. Fowler
and Leamas show that the distance between the
ideological end and the pragmatic means is too
wide for morality to survive. As Burgess notes: talk
of a free world does not necessarily mean the
spread of democratic rights.25 For our protagonists,
it is not armies or guns, but precisely the opinions
represented by ideologues like Fielder and Pyle that
bring real threat and danger to peoples lives. Fowler
describes Pyles ideological motivation as purely
theoretical when he says, I wish sometimes you
had a few bad motives, you might understand a little
more about human beings. And that goes for your
country too, Pyle . Leamas continues the metaphor
of Cold War ideologue as high moralist telling Liz a
spys job is keep the preachers from blowing each
other sky high. Fowler is a widely experienced war-
correspondent for whom political innocence seen

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When we freeze, we die

as is a kind of insanity , and prides himself on his paid off, and thats the only rule. For Leamas, spies
journalistic objectivity: as a reporter, I had no real are not heroes or moral warriors. They are merely
opinions about anything. Leamas, an experienced a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes:
British spy, voices a similar lack of opinion: I dont pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play
believe in anything. Fowlers objective detachment cowboys and Indians and brighten their rotten lives.
from the politics and ideological passion of war is As Le Carr wrote to the Russians, The Communist
so total, that he refuses a protective helmet from a should be able to reconcile the loss of innocent life
French soldier near Phat Diem, replying, Those are with the progress of the proletarian revolution;
for combatants. Western man cant.28
We meet Greenes cold warrior late in his career. He Both novels characterise their protagonists by their
is old, and immoral even by the jaded standards of opposition to the mouthpieces of Cold War ideology
a modern reader. Fowler has lived a life of lying and (Fiedler and Pyle) who they befriend then betray. For
betrayal. He smokes opium regularly, betrays his wife Pyle and Fiedler individual deaths do not matter in
with the much younger Phuong, and lies to everyone the drive towards unchanging29 ideological ends.
to satisfy his base desires: he lies to Phuong about It is against this maxim that Leamas and Fowler
the divorce, lies to Pyle about Phuong, lies to Vigot become engag. After the massacre at the caf, Pyle
about Pyle, writes false or confusing reports26 tells Fowler they were only war casualties it was
and on and on it goes. Greenes cold warrior, a pity, but you cant always hit your target. Anyway,
then, is presented as a grey man with no personal they died in the right cause. Similarly, Fielder
morality. As a reporter in wartime he knows almost tells Leamas I myself would have put a bomb in a
everything he writes will be censored, heavily edited restaurant if it brought us (the party) further along
or just plain ignored, but it is through Fowlers the road. Afterwards I would draw the balance so
confessional tone that the narrative criticism of US many women, so many children: and so far along
ideology is voiced. As Whitfield argues, it is precisely the road. It is this debasement of the individual
this warts and all portrayal of Fowlers moral faults, before the demands of ideology that Greene and Le
his cynical aloofness from the ideological claims Carr fight so vehemently. As Greene says, it is not
of the Communists and from the patriotism of the betrayal or defection that interest me, but what goes
French, his scarred frailty and moral uncertainty
(which) all validate his authority as a teller.27
Le Carr uses a hearsay style of narration to
introduce us to Leamas at the end of a long career
as a spy, which has cost him a marriage, his children
and his friends. His entire operation in Berlin has
failed, with all of his agents killed by the ex-Nazi
head of the Abteilung, Mundt. Leamas is a heavy
drinker with few friends who looked like trouble,
and perhaps most importantly like Fowler before
him he is not quite a gentleman. When recalled to
London, he expects to be put on ice and Control
asks if he is burnt out. Leamas has no political
philosophy and doesnt trust those that do, and
in the face of ideology, even from his own side,
he is lost. When Control starts to talk Cold War
philosophy early in the novel, he writes it off as
drivel and when Mundt is described as a non-
intellectual practitioner of the Cold War, Leamas
adds like us. When Fiedler presses him for his
own views on Cold War ideologies Leamas sums
up his entire philosophy with the line I just think
the whole lot of you are bastards. In Leamas world
there is only one moral rule: it is justified by results,
an idea repeated towards the end of the novel when
Leamas tells Liz it was a foul, foul operation. But its
Graham Greene. Source: Wikimedia Commons

English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013 

When we freeze, we die
with it, a sort of waning faith30 and for Le Carr,
this immoral behaviour a cost too high for society to
pay.31
Events eventually force our protagonists to become
engag, and to embrace the passions of the real
people (not the spies) around them. Both men are
led down this path by love for a much younger and
more vibrant woman, though the results are very
different. The word engag comes from an ancient
French notion of a pledge, and it is this meaning
Greene and Le Carr bring forth in very different
ways. Fowler becomes engag after the caf bombing,
when he realises what Pyle will inflict upon the
innocent people of Vietnam. Fowler cannot stay
degag forever: sooner or later one has to take
sides, if one is to remain human. As White argues,
the event forces Fowler to confront the insufficiency
of his critical detachment and marks a moment of
transcendence wherein his love for Phuong becomes
a greater love for the Vietnamese people signifying
Fowlers awakening to true empathy.32 When Fowler
betrays Pyle to the communists, the transformation
is complete: I had betrayed my own principles; I had
become as engag as Pyle. For Fowler to become
engag is an ethical imperative: to champion the
cause of life by insisting on the authenticity of those
deaths Pyle considers to be merely symbolic.33
Leamas, however, begins to become engag after
falling in love with Liz, almost as though he is making
a new pledge with life.34 Leamas tells us he knew
then what it was that Liz had given him. It was a
respect for triviality whether it was bread for the
seagulls or love. The affair reawakens an inner
vulnerability35 in Leamas. He starts to believe his
love for Liz may be his salvation, for which Mundt
calls him a fool , and in his newfound humanity rails
with his last thoughts at the death of the innocent
children on the bus. It is this sense of innocence that
finally allows Leamas to choose death with Liz, over
a life without her as he climbs down the Wall at the
end of the novel.
In conclusion, we can see that the characters
of Fowler and Leamas are constructed in direct
opposition not only to the content, but the very
articulation of Cold War ideologies. The physical
atmosphere of both novels comments continually
on these ideologies, with political philosophies
represented by cold winds and inhuman
environments and normal lives full of love and
innocence symbolised by warmth. Our characters are
both constructed as moving in from this cold, with
very different results. Neither protagonist espouses
any form of philosophy, but both are portrayed as
10
having lived long lives working for those that do.
It is precisely in reaction to the actions of such
ideologues as Pyle and Fiedler that our protagonists
eventually become engag, pledging themselves to
life and to love in the face of the immoral espionage
bureaucracies and faceless ideologues from both
sides of the Cold War. Greene shows us the rectitude
of such action, as Fowler is handsomely rewarded
for his attack on ideology and his life changes almost
entirely for the better: his rival is removed, his wife
grants him a divorce, his employer a promotion and
his lover a new life together. Le Carr is perhaps
more cynical; however, as for Leamas, there will
be no redemption. His new love and new life are
kindled, begin to glow but are then dragged down
with him into his cold grave.
Endnotes
1
Hobsbawm, E. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth
Century 19141991. Great Britain: Abacus (1995), p226
2
Hindersmann, J. The Right Side Lost but the Wrong
Side Won: John Le Carrs Spy Novels before and After
the End of the Cold War, Clues 23, no.4 (2005), p27
3
Stevenson, A. (ed.) Warsaw Pact Oxford Dictionary of
English. Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference
Online. Oxford University Press. Sydney University. 17
June 2012 http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy1.
library.usyd.edu.au/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&e
ntry=t140.e0938560
4
Kim Philby, quoted in Jackson, H. Kermit Kim
Roosevelt: US presidents grandson who masterminded
CIA coup to restore the Shah of Iran, The Guardian,
Tuesday 13 June, available from http://www.guardian.
co.uk/news/2000/jun/13/guardianobituaries.
haroldjackson
5
Le Carr, J. Foreword, in The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold. London: Sceptre, 2006, p5
6
VietnamGear.com Vietnam War Timeline: 1963 1964
Available from http://www.vietnamgear.com/war1963.
aspx
7
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. Ich bin ein Berliner Speech
(June 26, 1963), available at http://millercenter.org/
president/speeches/detail/3376
8
Allain, M-F. (Trans. By Waldman, G.) The Other Man:
Conversations With Graham Greene. Great Britain: The
Bodley Head, 1983, p39
9
Le Carr, J. About John le Carr: An overview of his
history and a word on the Author by the Author, available
from http://www.johnlecarre.com/author
10
Greene, G. Ways of Escape. Great Britain: The Bodley
Head (1980) p164/5
11
Le Carr, J. Foreword, in The Spy Who Came in from
English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013
When we freeze, we die
the Cold. London: Sceptre, 2006, p6
12
Dobel, J.P. The Honorable Spymaster: John Le Carr and
the Character of Espionage, Administration & Society vol.
20 no. 2 (August 1988), p196
13
Greene, G. The Quiet American. London: Vintage
(2004), p173. All subsequent references to this edition are
incorporated in the text.
14
Le Carr, J. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
London: Sceptre (2006), p15. All subsequent references to
this edition are incorporated in the text.
15
Foertsch, J. Ordinary Pocket Litter: Paper(s) as
Dangerous Supplement(s) in Cold War Novels of Intrigue,
Contemporary Literature Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer, 2007),
p297
16
Hindersmann, J. The Right Side Lost but the Wrong
Side Won: John Le Carrs Spy Novels before and After
the End of the Cold War, Clues 23, no. 4 (2005), p26
17
Martin, B K. Le Carrs The Spy Who Came In From
The Cold: A Structuralist Reading, Sydney studies in
English 14 (January 01, 1988), p88
18
Hoffman, T. Le Carrs Legacy, Queens Quarterly 108,
no. 3 (2001): p4 of 8
19
Schrecker, E., Introduction: Cold War Triumphalism
and the Real Cold War, in Cold War Triumphalism: The
Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism, ed. Ellen
Schrecker (New York: New York Press, 2004), p1
20
Schrecker, E., Introduction: Cold War Triumphalism
and the Real Cold War, in Cold War Triumphalism: The
Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism, ed. Ellen
Schrecker (New York: New York Press, 2004), p1
21
Horn, E. and Ogger, S. Knowing the Enemy:
The Epistemology of Secret Intelligence, Grey Room, No.
11 (Spring, 2003), p76
22
Le Carr, John To Russia, with Greetings: An Open
Letter to the Moscow Literary Gazette, Encounter, (May
1966), p6
23
Le Carr, John To Russia, with Greetings: An Open
Letter to the Moscow Literary Gazette, Encounter, (May
1966), p6
24
Steigman, K. The literal American: rereading Graham
Greene in an age of security, College Literature, Volume
39, Issue 1 (Winter 2012), p8
25
Burgess, A. Politics in the Novels of Graham Greene,
Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 2, No. 2, Literature
and Society (Apr., 1967), p96
26
Steigman, K. The literal American: rereading Graham
Greene in an age of security, College Literature, Volume
39, Issue 1 (Winter 2012), p11
27
Whitfield, S.J. Limited Engagement: The Quiet
American as History, Journal of American Studies 30,
(1996), p68
28
Le Carr, John To Russia, with Greetings: An Open
Letter to the Moscow Literary Gazette, Encounter, (May
English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013
1966), p5
29
Atkins, J. The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery.
London: Calder (1984), p179
30
Graham Greene quoted in Allain, M-F. (Trans. By
Waldman, G.) The Other Man: Conversations With
Graham Greene. Great Britain: The Bodley Head (1983),
p104
31
Le Carr, John To Russia, with Greetings:
An Open Letter to the Moscow Literary Gazette,
Encounter, (May 1966), p5
32
White, C.D. Graham Greenes The Quiet American,
The Explicator 67, no. 1 (2008): p33
33
Smith, Z., Introduction, in The Quiet American,
Greene, G. (London: Vintage, 2004), pxi
34
Hindersmann, J. The Right Side Lost but the Wrong
Side Won: John Le Carrs Spy Novels before and After
the End of the Cold War, Clues 23, no. 4 (2005), p29
35
Cawelti, J.G. and Rosenberg, B.A. The Spy Story.
Chicago and Londong: University of Chicago Press
(1987), p167
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ETA Scholarship recipient
Sonya Campbell, UNE
My English teaching journey
is a testament to the power
of chance encounters. As a
passionate consumer of stories and the written
word, I frequented the local library each weekend
whilst at high school. I would spend hours seeking
new opportunities to be challenged and diverted by
my favourite authors. One fortuitous Saturday, this
ritual coincided with a library visit by the author
Melina Marchetta. She spoke of her experiences
combining English teaching with a rich reading
and writing life. As I listened attentively in the
back row, I made the connection for the first time
between my cherished world of books and the
possible career path of teaching. I am currently in
the final year of my tertiary degree in English and
education, and the real world of teaching beckons
in 2014. My practicums have provided me with
12
Martin, B K. Le Carrs The Spy Who Came In From
The Cold: A Structuralist Reading, Sydney studies in
English 14 (January 01, 1988): 7288.
Maxwell, R. What Is a Spy to Do? Social Text, No. 56
(Autumn, 1998): 125141
Schrecker, E., Introduction: Cold War Triumphalism
and the Real Cold War, in Cold War Triumphalism:
The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism,
ed. Ellen Schrecker (New York: New York Press, 2004),
124.
Smith, Z., Introduction, in The Quiet American,
Greene, G. (London: Vintage, 2004), vii-xiii
Steigman, K. The literal American: rereading Graham
Greene in an age of security, College Literature,
Volume 39, Issue 1 (Winter 2012): 126
Stevenson, A. (ed.) Warsaw PactOxford Dictionary
of English. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University
Press.Sydney University.17 June 2012http://www.
oxfordreference.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.
au/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t140.
e0938560
VietnamGear.com Vietnam War Timeline: 1963 1964
http://www.vietnamgear.com/war1963.aspx
White, C.D. Graham Greenes The Quiet American,
The Explicator 67, no. 1 (2008): 3335.
Whitfield, S.J. Limited Engagement: The Quiet American
as History, Journal of American Studies 30, (1996):
6586.
key insights regarding the difficulties and pressures
facing English teachers, but I am enthusiastic about
the pivotal role English teachers can play in the lives
of young people. We expose students to the capacity
of language to empower or disempower people.
We stimulate their ability to think in creative and
divergent ways as we grapple with the workings
of great minds. Through the inclusion of diverse
perspectives, we encourage students to respond
to difference with empathy and tolerance. We
introduce students to the solace and incomparable
joy of losing oneself in the world of a text. I am filled
with enthusiasm at the prospect of finally putting
theory into practice! Therefore, I must offer my
sincerest thanks to Melina Marchetta, along with
my brilliant English teaching mentors Mick Larkin
and Edie Wright, for their direct and indirect help in
guiding me along this special path.
English Teachers Association of NSW mETAphor Issue 3, 2013