02-19-2019, 08:03 PM | #61 | |
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I'm with Victoria on this. Yes, Toby was breaking rules to make the recording, but Quinn was clearly breaking a great many more.
I liked the term "solitary decider" also. Toby is the whistleblower, a man with ethics when there are precious few of them on display anywhere else. You may have noted in the Acknowledgements that le Carré expressed his thanks and admiration for Carne Ross, Quote:
In Australia, we have our own version of Carne Ross, a man called Andrew Wilkie, and one of the few of our parliamentarians who has my respect. (Unsurprisingly, he's an independent.) He was a senior figure in Australian intelligence and felt so strongly about what was being fabricated as an excuse for our involvement in that same invasion that he resigned his post and then gave information to a trusted journalist. And what do you know: the response of the government was to denigrate him as much as they could. He wasn't very senior (he was); he was in a fragile mental state because of recently separating from his wife (he wasn't); and so on. And of course Australia went ahead with the rest of the gang, and in due course it was shown that everything that Wilkie had said was absolutely correct and true. |
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02-19-2019, 09:02 PM | #62 | ||||
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I think my previous post was a little bit ... not tongue in cheek, but maybe devil's advocate. I can see how le Carré expected us to react, but as is my habit with books I'm not enjoying, I found my entertainment in being picky/contrary. Quote:
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But no. We skim across a career that seems quite passive, with little overt sign of political passion - making it seem like his girlfriend got it right. It's like we are told one thing but shown something else. And then the tape is collected and sat on for three years until someone else (Kit, acting out of character, it seemed to me) causes Toby to wake up and become heroic. You can see that I really never "got" Toby as a character and that rather spoiled my reaction to the book. |
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02-19-2019, 09:18 PM | #63 | |
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02-20-2019, 12:04 AM | #64 | |
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02-20-2019, 10:00 AM | #65 |
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I do like shoutouts, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they amuse me, but they can also illuminate. Sometimes they're overt, as with the Scarlet Pimpernel references or even that rickety bridge, but they can be illuminating when they involve shared themes.
I find a lot of overlap between the characters of Estraven from Left Hand of Darkness both as whistleblowers and as those who had a more idealized or hopeful view of society than currently obtained. The other thing they perhaps had in common as it's open-ended here, is martyrdom. Estraven actively chose it; I wonder if Toby had seen that as a potential end, and not just as the possible torpedoing of his career, he would have pursued his course? Ultimately, he relied on a deep-rooted sense of fairplay and justice, it seems to me, despite the evidence that it didn't always apply. Could he have conceived that he might have been silenced, rather than marginalized? By the time Jeb was eliminated he was mostly committed morally and emotionally, even though Crispin offered him an out. But had he known sooner? Could he have compromised his conscience to the extent of, "Keep your head down and do what good you can at the margins"? |
02-20-2019, 04:24 PM | #66 |
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The Pimpernel reference (I only caught the one), I thought was rather odd. An Englishman such as "Paul" might be presumed to think of the Scarlet Pimpernel in heroic terms, but here we have the objectionable Elliot describe "Punter" (the presumed villain) as "your jihadist Pimpernel par excellence". Rather a mixed message. Is this the author sending another signal that Elliot is not someone to be trusted, someone in line with Chauvelin, perhaps? (As if another signal was actually needed ... written for TV, perhaps.)
A curious comparison with The Left Hand of Darkness, issybird. I felt as if I understood Estraven rather more than I do Toby ... so I wouldn't like to guess at Toby's behaviour if the circumstances had changed. |
02-20-2019, 04:32 PM | #67 |
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I think that by the end, Toby saw it as a very real possibility that he would be killed by Crispin’s henchmen. He wanted to get Emily to leave him to keep her safe, even though he couldn’t have got to the Internet cafe on his own, or operated the keyboard.
Near the beginning of his part of the story, there was a conversation with his mentor about the moral dilemma of whether to stay working for a government with whose policy you disagree, or leaving and being “another lost voice bleating in the wilderness”. Initially, he stayed, but in the end he felt he had to act, whatever the consequences. That’s an interesting comparison with Estraven, who clearly at the end acted as he did to force the situation. He must have felt he didn’t have anything left to live for, exiled from his home and his country. Toby did however, having met Emily who was clearly his soulmate. Crossed with gmw! Last edited by Bookpossum; 02-20-2019 at 04:35 PM. |
02-20-2019, 04:55 PM | #68 | ||
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On the other hand, he was very young man when Oakley began tutoring him. At age 31, he did decide to tape-record Quinn. He also decided to keep the evidence, despite Oakley’s warning, even though he wasn’t certain what he had until Kit’s letter. So Le Carré could also be portraying the son of devout parents, slowly maturing, and coming into his own as an independent, good man. The more we look, the more it seems that Le Carré leaves it up to the reader to decide who Toby was. Oops: Crossed with Bookpossum Last edited by Victoria; 02-20-2019 at 04:57 PM. Reason: Crossed with Bookpossum :) |
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02-20-2019, 05:02 PM | #69 |
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02-20-2019, 05:03 PM | #70 |
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Well, I liked Toby, and I think he developed into a man prepared to stand by his principles, even if it meant disgrace, injury or possibly death. He was decent and honest, in a world where there was precious little of either quality.
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02-20-2019, 06:02 PM | #71 | |
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This made think of the quote attributed to Disraeli, about an ambassador being a honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. Toby struck me as an ordinary man, one who took on a career with a LONG history of treating truth as a fluid concept. Knowing this, he still reached the limits of what his conscience would permit in terms of reality distortion and truth manipulation, and once he'd committed to upholding what he saw as correct, he stuck to it. Right to what I still think was his dying breath. |
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02-20-2019, 06:46 PM | #72 |
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Good quote - I hadn't come across that one.
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02-20-2019, 08:38 PM | #73 |
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02-21-2019, 07:33 AM | #74 | |
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But I didn't take the Pimpernel references as being more than an indication of how deeply ingrained the story is, perhaps especially for spookish Brits. Fun for us, coming so soon after reading it. Last edited by issybird; 02-21-2019 at 09:32 AM. |
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02-21-2019, 07:38 AM | #75 | ||
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Last edited by issybird; 02-21-2019 at 07:40 AM. |
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