Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part A (2020)

This article compares the characters of George Smiley (created by John Le Carre and James Bond (created by Ian Fleming). Bond was the archetype of a member of the officer class who obeyed orders unquestioningly. Smiley was a gentleman as revealed by his behavior and reactions to events. I have compared them on two broad parameters namely, a) physical appearance, and e) morality, by which I mean their attitudes to women. There could have been many more of such parameters, but I felt that these were the important ones and were also a comprehensive platform for the analysis of the two men. The basis of this article are the novels written by Fleming and Le Carre in which these two characters appear. Familiarity with their writings will give the reader a better insight into this article. I have not touched on the Bond or Smiley movies, because the Bond movies especially, do not depict him as envisaged by Ian Fleming in his novels. The main thread running through the article is how an adventurous figure like Bond and a short, worried looking figure like Smiley could hold the attention of readers even though they differed in so many aspects.