John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)

Project description

Answer Sheet on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Submit your answer sheet on the following questions to me, including your name, at or before the start of the corresponding class.

1) Guillam, under intense stress from covertly stealing materials from the Secret service for Smiley to examine, is talking to his lover, Camilla. How does the following passage link the issue of Guillam’s anxieties about Camilla with the subject of his anxieties about the Secret service? Why is Guillam so interested in who happens to be passing the flat? What does his interest in this convey about his psychological and emotional condition?

4) In chapters 20-21 Smiley sends Guillam to steal the file containing the records of the Testify operation from the Service’s archives. What sense do we get of Institutionalization (ie: of life being lived according to professional codes and regulations in ways that may erode freedom of thought, action and creativity) in this chapter? What is the purpose of the fake phone conversation that Guillam and Mendel have with one another – how does this interaction illustrates the phoniness or unreality of life as a spy?

8) In chapter 23 Smiley recalls for Guillam how, about twenty years earlier in the mid 1950s, Karla (now the head of Soviet intelligence) was arrested by the Indian police while on espionage work there under the codename Gestermann. Smiley was sent to try and persuade him to defect to the West rather being flown back to the Soviet Union for probable execution as punishment for the failed mission. In fact it was Karla’s then superiors who were shot while he survived and was rehabilitated.
What impression does the reader get of Karla’s character in this episode?