![]() ![]() ![]() In a powerful scene, Hasselbacher reveals that he became a doctor to assuage his guilt at having killed a man in the First World War. ![]() Like Fowler and Scobie, the protagonists of The Quiet American and The Heart of the Matter, Dr Hasselbacher is both pathetic and wise. As secrets and lies collide with reality, the results are at first comic but quickly become deadly.ĭr Hasselbacher is undoubtedly one of Greene's finest studies of human nature in all its frailty. It is Hasselbacher who gives Wormold the idea of playing checkers with miniature bottles of whisky-‘when you take a piece you drink it’-a game that Wormold uses to inebriate and procure valuable information from the chief of police. It is, after all, the good doctor who suggests to Wormold that he concoct imaginary agents to satisfy British Intelligence: ‘all you need is a little imagination, Mr Wormold’. Although Wormold is the titular protagonist, it is really his morose German friend, Dr Hasselbacher, who has the most poignant scenes. ![]() In Graham Greene's masterpiece Our man in Havana, the unassuming vacuum-cleaner salesman Jim Wormold is recruited into a precarious game of international espionage in pre-revolution Cuba. But if you are interested in life it never lets you down.’ ‘You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us. ![]()
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