Olivia Adams

Olivia Adams

Christina Black

English 1147: The Mystery in the Story

Assignment 6

One and the Same

Looking at the drawing you see one face, but in reality it is composed of multiple faces.  Why are these people combined to make one? Is it that they are recognizable, take similar actions, or simply hold power? Are they even notable people or just someone you would pass on the street? Although these questions are difficult to answer, one thing is certain.  It is not easy to simply identify the people who make up the picture and even more difficult to decide whether they are good or evil individuals.  The difference between good and evil, us and our enemies, this culture and that culture, is very fine.  All in all, we are really one and the same.

            The picture is made up of ten world leaders, both respected and feared.  It is difficult to clearly identify who exactly is portrayed in some instances and even when you can, their features blend with those of the next person in the drawing.  This demonstrates how the line between good and evil is blurred and often both sides show similar characteristics.  George W. Bush, one of the political leaders in the drawing, is a controversial president who demonstrates this concept.  Depending on who you ask, Bush can be regarded as an excellent leader or one who destroyed the country.  He displays how a “hero” may take actions someone would expect a “villain” to take.  The line between good and evil is blurred in many circumstances.

            It is also difficult to distinguish between one leader and another due to similar characteristics.  However, it is important not to stereotype.  Just because people may have similar characteristics, it does not mean they have similar views or take similar actions.  Ban Ki-Moon and Kim Jong-Il are both portrayed in the drawing and happen to have facial features that resemble that of the other.  Even though this is so, their political standpoints vary greatly.  Ban Ki-Moon is the Secretary General of the United Nations and is someone who promotes peace-talks and international compromises while Kim Jong-Il was the leader of North Korea preparing for nuclear war and isolating his country.  The juxtaposition of these two people who look quite similar communicates that one cannot jump to conclusions based upon stereotypes as someone who should be regarded as a “hero” can inappropriately be seen as a “villain.”  The physical characteristics can be very similar between “us” and “them,” but it is very important to look beyond that and understand an individual’s viewpoint.

The small difference between “us” and “them” is a central theme in many works.  It is first discussed in Lehman’s introduction where he says the stories blur the line between “Us and Them” showing how alike the culprit and detective can be.   He elaborates explaining how characters on opposite sides show similar characteristics or even how the good can end up being on the wrong side of a situation (Lehman xv).  Analyzing the Bush aspect of the drawing is comparable to what Lehman is discussing.  With this brought to our attention by Lehman, it is easy to identify points of this issue in the multiple novels read.

This issue is once again brought up in two other novels, The Maltese Falcon and Our Man in Havana where the notions of good and evil seem to be questioned.  Both protagonists in these novels have questionable motivations driving their actions throughout the books. 

In The Maltese Falcon, Spade is partially driven by monetary gain and performs some illegal actions in order to complete his investigation showing how the protagonist and his enemy can behave very similarly.  When talking to Brigid, Spade says, ““We didn’t exactly believe your story…We believed your two hundred dollars”’ (Hammett 33).  Some may say that this was the wrong thing to do and goes against the law displaying his greedy personality.  Yet, Spade still turns Brigid into the cops.  This displays Spade’s conflicting persona of doing the wrong thing to inevitably do the right thing with the reasoning of the ends justifying the means.  This shows how blurred the line can be as Spade, the “hero” can be difficult to see in such a positive light at times.

In Our Man in Havana, Wormold lies to MI-6 in order to get money to care for his daughter but eventually discovers his wrongdoings.  This novel exemplifies how the good can end up on the bad side of a situation at times as brought up by Lehman.  The narrator states “Childhood was the germ of all mistrust.  You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked’ (Greene 27).  Germs are something that stay in your system and become pestering and a nuisance.  Because Greene chooses this word, the reader can understand that this has been a bother for so long that he cannot get the need for vengeance out of his head.  Overall, Wormold is a good person, however this “germ” has caused so many problems that he feels the only thing to do is vengeful acts.  The germ and Wormold’s greed corrupt a good person and make him appear evil communicating this blurred line.

The Spy Who came in from the Cold focuses on this issue as well.  Throughout the novel it is very difficult to distinguish between who is on which side and where loyalties lie.  The reader is led to picture Mundt as the enemy.  But in the end, he is actually part of the same side as Leamas.  Control discusses this similarity as he says “I would say that since the war, our methods- ours and those of the opposition- have become much the same” (Le Carré 16).  The difference between “us” and the “enemy” is practically nonexistent.  In Le Carré’s novel, the tactics and at some points methodology are almost exactly the same.  The good can appear as evil and the evil may appear as good.  As communicated in this novel, one cannot jump to conclusions when deciding who the enemy is, and stereotypes often play a role when this occurs. 

This aspect of the argument is demonstrated in The Reluctant Fundamentalist as stereotypes are addressed and the line between who is a terrorist and who is not is very hard to determine.  In the opening of the novel, Changez addresses the American saying “Ah, I see I have alarmed you.  Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America” (Hamid 1).  Changez is constantly faced with stereotypes of people from Pakistan and wants to prove that he is just like everyone else.  He often makes clarifications to reaffirm that there is nothing the American should be afraid of in his presence.  However, as he claims to be a lover of America and then consistently contradicts that statement in his recollections of past events, it is hard to conclude that Changez is not a terrorist.  This demonstrates that it is very hard to identify terrorists and non-terrorists ultimately showing that the difference between us and them can be very modest.  As in the drawing you do not know whether the side of the head with the turban is a terrorist leader or not.  One must not draw conclusions just from appearances because the difference between us and them is very little.

Ultimately there are a multitude of things to interpret from this theme, demonstrated by the complexity of the drawing and the novels.  Each one conveys its own message, but all of them show that the line between us and them is often blurred and it is not easy to differentiate between the two.

The creative process was harder than I expected.  I had originally intended to include twelve different world leaders, but it became too difficult to show a significant amount of that many people in one face.  It was also hard to find the aspects that match up the easiest and would therefore blend together best.  This was especially difficult as I tried to choose notable aspects of each person represented in the drawing so they would be somewhat more recognizable.  Throughout the creative process I changed my mind multiple times as to who I would include and what aspects of those people I would include until coming upon my final draft.  I was inspired by the many misguided views uninformed people have of influential leaders. My hope was to communicate that although their initial opinions may be correct, you must look deeper than the surface to understand a person and their beliefs.  Ultimately I believe the final version best represented the concept I wanted to convey.

People in the drawing:

Osama Bin Laden

Queen Elizabeth

Gandhi

Kim Jong-Il

Ban Ki-Moon

Barack Obama

George W. Bush

Adolf Hitler

Joseph Stalin

Fidel Castro

Works Cited

Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Boston: Mariner Books, 2013.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Le Carré J. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel. S.l.: Penguin Group

US, 2012. 

Lehman, David. Introduction. The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection. University of

Michigan, 2000. Xiii-vii.