The Ambiguity of Human Nature: Motives and Personality

Abstract

Le Carré consistently relates the personal to the political—for example, in the relationship between temperament and ideology.Although he repeats through Smiley and others the theme that human motivation is an unsolvable mystery, he nonetheless carefully examines the clues. He frequently discloses multiple motives without prioritizing them, as if to imply they are random. Le Carré has confidence in his readers: “The people … will give you the time you ask of them and the concentration you ask of them.”¹ He expects them to make the effort to puzzle out meanings for themselves.² Ultimately, however, le Carré’s view of human nature is that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the internal realities of individuals and that we can never completely identify with the feelings of our fellow human beings; we remain forever a mystery to one another.³ In a humorous short story, he suggests that there are no objective truths about man, perhaps only about eternal nature.⁴

He [Smiley] reflected for the hundredth time on the obscurity of motive in human action. (A Murder of Quality, 113)

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. (Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night)