忠诚的困惑与背叛的美德——论格雷厄姆·格林的国际政治小说《人性的因素》

Confusion of Loyalty and Virtue of Disloyalty:On Graham Greene's International Political Novel The Human Factor

英国小说家格雷厄姆·格林的《人性的因素》是以"冷战"为背景、借用间谍小说模式创作的国际政治小说。这个"不浪漫"的间谍故事明显通过对"邦德"系列小说的"反转"和"逆向",实现了对"007"之类虚假英雄形象的"戏仿"和"背叛",并深入讨论了国家意识形态、社会责任和个人天性是如何在惯性和误解中发生交集和导致悲剧的。格林提出了一种针对现代伦理困境的"背叛的美德",鼓励人们对绝对判断和现成原则保持勇敢的怀疑态度,严肃地对具体生活和个人道德进行审查和思考。人性的因素和人权关怀不仅帮助人们超越国家间政治的种种弊端,而且可以开启人们相互同情和理解的智慧通道。

The British novelist Graham Greene has contributed several political novels to the literary history of the 20 Century in an unique style that defines the duality of his aesthetics the creator of fast-pace thrillers and the writer of artistic seriousness and significance, a sound storyteller, while applying techniques from modernist literature, focusing on the great events of the 20 Century, but from a modern point of view of morality. The story accentuates the vast discrepancy between our romanticized conception of the secret agent and his dull reality. From reversing the well-known spy character James Bond, Greene＇s protagonist Castle accomplished his ＂parody＂ and ＂betrayal＂ to fake heroes like Bond. Greene also satirizes the ＂ignoble＂ foreign politics during the Cold War and the state power competition which is honored by collective selfishness. Like Daintry, a typical character of ＂habitual＂ survivors in modern society has been brought up. They are conditioned to their professional obligations given by the state or society; therefore tend to make no independent thinking or decision. Greene warns, like Daintry, that these people could easily become antihuman ＂accomplice＂ in ideology discourses which may cause mass tragedy. The novel superficially measures Castle＇s confusion of loyalty to country or to human. It explores, however, deeply on the moral dilemma of modern society. Compared to Castle＇s fidelity problem, the type of heroes like Bond who always won on screen, shows a propaganda machine or a simplified substitute of political ideology. Ian Fleming has built a literary mirage to help people escape from the reality; while Greene used real historic space and fictional literary imagination to establish a ＂global village＂ which involved each person. People are compelled to face the human flaws, and in meantime obtain the potential human factors which they themselves are not aware of. Greene criticized, on the one hand, the unreasonable and antihuman political logic in the espionage world, and expressed his sympathy with Castle who fought to remain human in the powerful system of nation. On the other hand, Castle＇s naive and absurdity on trying to isolate his personal life from political world was also satirized in the novel. In the end, Greene suggested a ＂virtue of disloyalty＂ to surpass the modern ethical dilemma. He encouraged people to bravely take a skeptical attitude to any absolute judgment or established principle, and in this case, to examine seriously daily life and personal morality. In addition, the point of view from the American critic Michael Sheldon is refuted in this essay. He defined that Greene created Castle to defend his friend Kim Philby who was Greene＇s supervisor in MI6 but turned out to be a double agent and fled to Moscow. Since Castle is presented both with sympathy and criticism in the novel and the espionage systems UK and SU are satirized, the viewpoint above can hardly explain itself. The friendship between Greene and Philby is set on a personal history rather than on sharing certain political ideologies.