Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“Recently, without knowing why, he had started using them again; perhaps he didn’t want her to take him by surprise.”

Smiley’s one weakness is Ann. She cheats on him regularly, but he never leaves her. He is aware of the way this dedication to an unfaithful lover makes him appear to others, so he strives to soothe his damaged ego. Smiley is an excellent spy, so he uses his spy craft to make him feel better about Ann. She may be unfaithful to him, but he is able to demonstrate to himself that he is intelligent and worthy regardless of her behavior. Smiley has used these techniques to avoid pain and detection for years. He obfuscates his real emotions by employing these techniques.

“He would have liked a little coffee from the percolator but somehow he didn’t feel able to ask.”

Smiley is constantly engaged in a complicated, nuanced game of intelligence. He is so reserved and unwilling to give away even the slightest hint of weakness, that he denies himself seemingly innocuous small pleasures to maintain an image of quiet, dignified strength. Smiley wants the coffee, but he refuses so that he does not appear tired or old. This refusal to show any slight weakness or to give anything away is born out of years of paranoid survival. Even in retirement, Smiley cannot leave his learned paranoia behind.

“My very words, Mr Smiley.”

Ricki Tarr is a young, reckless field agent recruited by Smiley. To the wayward Tarr, Smiley is an awe-inspiring father figure. He is desperate to please Smiley, carefully watching the older man for any sign of approval and validation. In the context of the novel, Tarr’s desperate need for Smiley’s approval is a subtle indication of Smiley’s towering reputation in the world of intelligence. He might seem like a tired old man, but Smiley is vaunted by the young and dangerous spies who operate in the intelligence world.

“You’re not responsible for everyone, you know, George.”

Smiley is told that he is not responsible for everyone, but he does not listen. As the man who recruited and oversaw so many of the people at the Circus, Smiley feels indebted to them, just as they feel indebted to him. Smiley is not necessarily a patriot because he has no grand conception of Britain as a shining beacon worthy of love and praise. Instead, he feels a responsibility for the people he has dragged into the murky world of intelligence. For Smiley, responsibility operates on an individual level. This dedication which makes Smiley feels responsible for everyone is also what makes him an excellent spy master, recruiter, and investigator.

“After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full-time to the profession of forgetting.”

Retirement is framed as a negative skillset for Smiley. His skill as a spy is partly due to his ability to remember and catalogue so much information, even if this information is damaging or painful to remember. This excellent memory helped Smiley to survive for years and made him a distinguished figure across many countries. Retirement does not play to his strengths. In retirement, he must spend his time unlearning all the techniques that made him so successful. Whereas being a spy built on Smiley’s natural talents, he is ill-suited for retirement.

“There are old men who go back to Oxford and find their youth beckoning to them from the stones. Smiley was not one of them.”

Smiley’s visit back to Oxford does not stoke his nostalgia. Smiley can divorce himself from sentimentality and focus on the job at hand. Though the city is littered with important incidents from his past, he forgoes these indulgences. Though he may appear to be a doddering old man, struggling to come to terms with his place in a rapidly changing world, Smiley is laser-focused on his job. He forgoes simple, innocent distractions so that he can achieve his goals. His dedication and his resolve are subtle but hardened by years of survival and success. 

“I hate the real world, George. I like the Circus and all my lovely boys.”

Connie Sachs voices the sentiment which many others in the Circus feel but dare not speak aloud. Sachs, like many of the other people who have been fired from the Circus, has spent so long in the intelligence world that she has become addicted to the game. The real world seems infinitely dull, lacking in stakes, and pointless. When Sachs and others worked for the Circus, they risked their lives, battled against the smartest of rivals, and told themselves that they were doing so for the good of their country. Though they might not want to admit it, many of the people who have left the Circus struggle with retirement.

“Says he taught Bill modern history in the days before Empire became a dirty word.”

The Circus is filled with men who were raised in a world in which Great Britain was still a dominant world power. By the 1970s, the British Empire was a fraction of its former size and the men who were raised to consider themselves natural born rulers are now forced to content with life in a former empire while Russia and the US become the world’s preeminent superpowers. The decline of the British Empire fills the employees of the Circus with a sense of grievance. They resent that they were born after their country’s heyday and that nothing they do will allow their country to recapture its past glories. For men like Haydon, this fills everything with a sense of purposelessness which drives them toward committing extreme acts like treason. Haydon longs to be a figure of importance in an important country once again.

“So who is he? Beggarman? Thief?”

Prideaux lost everything in the aftermath of Operation Testify: his position in the Circus, his health, and his connection to the man he loves, Haydon. The result is that his paranoia and anxiety metastasize. Even the language he uses around the schoolboys illustrates his obsessions with his recent failures, as he employees the Tinker, Tailor nursery rhyme to frame his anxieties regarding a strange man on campus. Prideaux is haunted by the ghosts of the past, and he speaks about them in the only way he knows how: as a spy.

“Alleline was undeterred. He too was flushed, but with triumph, not disease.”

Control is brought down by the disease which makes his search for the mole increasingly desperate and urgent. Alleline is brought down by a different disease, the eager desire for success. Alleline’s ambition rots away the inside of the Circus, just as Control’s disease ravaged him from the inside. Alleline’s ambition—and any triumphs which result from it—shield him negatively to the way in which Haydon and Karla manipulate him. He does not question Operation Witchcraft or the Merlin source; his ambition means that his desire to succeed is vastly outweighed by his sense of caution. The Circus loses everything because Alleline is overly ambitions and his desire for success is as much a cancer on the Circus as the one that killed Control.

“That’s just England now, man.”

Roy Bland is a former left-leaning person who has now abandoned political ideology. He has grown up in the world of intelligence, witnessing how the East and the West are equally as hollow and paranoid. Neither capitalism in the US and Britain, nor communism in the Soviet Union seems worthwhile to Bland. The ideology of his youth, his former optimism, is replaced by a pessimistic view of Britain. The former Empire is reduced to a shadow of its former self. There is no longer any ideology worth fighting for, so Bland—like many others—is simply playing the game of intelligence for the sake of winning.

“The corridors were endless, with mirror walls and Versailles chandeliers, so that Guilliam was following not just one Esterhase but a whole delegation of them.”

The mirrored walls lining Esterhase’s escape route provide a neat metaphor for the intelligence world and the internal mechanics of the Circus. As Guilliam chases after a man he is not sure he can trust, endless reflections and mirrored images surround him. Guilliam is locked in a world where nothing is true, where everything is cloaked in lies, and which he can never be certain what to trust. The endless versions of Esterhase are all the same but different, to the point where discerning reality from its many reflections seems like a foolish venture. The lavish mirrored tunnel is a metaphor for the complicated, paranoid, and unreal world in which the Circus is everything.

“Each of us has only a quantum of compassion.”

Smiley’s assurances reveal his own identity. He tries to provide reassurances that the lack of compassion is a fundamental part of working for intelligence organizations, but this is not necessarily true. Other characters like Sachs show compassion and care. None of those who do, however, are as successful as Smiley, Karla, and Haydon. Smiley tells people that a lack of compassion is essential because that is the only way that he can justify his lack of compassion. Smiley is aware of his flaws and the sacrifices he has made. To reassure himself, he tells others than this behavior is unavoidable.

“‘Cheeribye,’ he said. ‘Mind how you go,’ and withdrew to the permanent night-time of his elected trade.”

Sam was fired from the Circus in the wake of Operation Testify. Now, he works for a gambling firm. Just like intelligence, the casino industry is built on a carefully understood world of lies and deceit. The “permanent nighttime” (197) of both the gambling and intelligence organizations suggests that both worlds operate beyond the conventional morality of normal jobs. They are both shadowy trades that operate in deliberately obscuring darkness. After leaving intelligence, Sam swaps one nighttime for another.

“Tomorrow, if he was lucky, he might spot land: a peaceful little desert island, for instance.”

When Smiley imagines victory, he pictures a lonely, desolate place where he cannot be reached. The desert island he pictures in his mind is, by its very nature, devoid of other people. Smiley’s idealized victory is an inherently lonely one, because he knows that the complicated nature of the problem he is trying to solve will only make enemies of many people. Everyone in charge at the Circus has reason to fear him, and Smiley does not care about driving them away. He has no real allies or allegiances to anything other than achieving his goal. Smiley’s vision of success is one in which his isolation and loneliness become positive, peaceful traits, rather than examples of his fear and paranoia.

“In their old age the two of them had walked into the biggest sucker’s punch in the history of the trade.”

The people who work for the Circus are trained to endure physical pain. However, they struggle to deal with the pain of failure. Professional pride leaves more of a lingering trauma than any injury. Characters like Prideaux and Max, another former employee, exhibit wounds from battle or torture, but they are more concerned about their professional missteps and the ways in which they could have succeeded. After a lifetime honing the skills needed to stay alive, the spies are more invested in these skills than in their own physical selves.

“Artists have totally different standards.”

Prideaux loves Haydon, and this affection clouds his judgment concerning Haydon’s character flaws. Though Haydon likewise loves Prideaux, he does not limit himself to one lover. This lack of commitment in romance is, according to Prideaux, due to Haydon’s artistic tendencies. Prideaux refuses to apply the same moral judgements to Haydon, whether they are discussing romance or treason. Both, to Prideaux, are examples of the ways in which Haydon is simply different from other men. His refusal to condemn a man who has hurt him reveals the depth of his love for Haydon.

“And that’s what I’ve been doing: obeying orders and forgetting!”

Prideaux is angry that he has been forced into hiding, but he views this as his duty. He accepts that he now must live with the trauma of his failure and the pain of two bullets in his shoulder, because this is the natural result of a life as a spy. Prideaux defines himself as a loyal servant to his country, so when he is ordered to forget, he has no other choice. Prideaux is the consummate spy, as he is always an unquestioning weapon of his government. This absolute dedication is counterbalanced by Haydon, who becomes disillusioned with his home country so becomes a traitor. Both men live the lives of spies, but only one man obeys the rules.

“Well that’s one excuse he won’t be able to use again.”

Thursgood is the owner of the school where Prideaux works, and he refuses to believe the story that Prideaux’s mother is sick. The framing of his refusal to believe is akin to a good cover story used by a spy. Prideaux is a natural intelligence agent who is used to lying to save his life, so his lack of respect for Thursgood is shown by the flimsy story he tells to leave the school. Whereas Prideaux might normally provide a watertight cover story to justify his absence, he tells a quick lie to Thursgood and then leaves. Thursgood might consider himself clever for refusing to believe Prideaux’s story, but the flimsy nature of the story reveals the lack of respect Prideaux has for his employer, who is not worth the effort of a meaningful lie.

“Survival, as Jim Prideaux liked to recall, is an infinite capacity for suspicion.”

To survive, the people who work in the Circus have developed rules for life. Prideaux tells himself and others that suspicion is a fundamental part of survival. To him, the only way to live is to employ constant suspicion against the world. This paranoid view of the world is not necessarily true, as many characters in the novel leave their suspicions behind and enjoy their lives. Instead, Prideaux’s view of the world is more telling of the lives the men need to tell themselves to justify their behavior. By telling himself that constant suspicion is the only way to stay alive, Prideaux is justifying his own fear and paranoia, assuring himself that he has made the right decisions in his life.

“Between them, the buildings were gimcrack, cheaply fitted out with bits of empire: a Roman bank, a theatre like a vast desecrated mosque.”

The world Smiley inhabits is falling apart. The weather is constantly cold and damp, the buildings are falling apart, and the social institutions are hollowed out and alienated from the population. This crumbling world is a metaphor for the faltering state of the British Empire. After centuries of colonizing the world and returning the riches to London, the “cheaply fitted out” (273) parts of London are now falling apart. Britain is the desecrated shadow of its former self, with the British intelligence agents forced to work in this shadow and assure themselves that their country is still worth fighting for.

“A sense of great things dwindling to a small, mean end.”

The British Empire once ruled huge parts of the world and made itself very rich by extracting wealth from conquered countries. However, the world of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one in which Britain is no longer a superpower. Rather than imposing itself on the world, Britain is “dwindling to a small, mean end” (280). For the characters, this collapsing empire is hardly worth fighting for. Instead, they find themselves caught between the new empires, struggling to assert their relevance in a world which no longer cares about them.

“It was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain.”

Smiley unveils Haydon as the traitor in the Circus, and he dwells here on his relationship with the man who stole his wife and betrayed his country. Smiley loves Britain as he loves Ann, as an imperfect constant in his life that he cannot envisage living without. Like Ann, however, Smiley is not sentimental about Britain. This lack of sentimentality compels Smiley to tell himself that his success in unveiling Haydon is not a personal matter. He tells himself that Haydon’s treason is a public matter, refusing to take satisfaction from punishing a man who has hurt him in the past. Smiley needs to tell himself this, to validate his role as a spy. He puts country and the greater good above everything else. If he refuses to take pleasure in Haydon’s downfall, he can assure himself that he is simply continuing his life’s work rather than pursuing unimportant personal agendas.