Characters and Themes
On Her Majesty's Secret Service contains what the author of "continuation" Bond novels Raymond Benson calls "major revelations" about Bond and his character. These start with Bond's showing an emotional side, visiting the grave of Casino Royale's Vesper Lynd, which he did every year. The emotional side continues with Bond asking Tracy to marry him. The character of Tracy is not as well defined as some other female leads in the Bond canon, but Benson points out that that it may be the enigmatic quality that Bond falls in love with. Benson also notes that Fleming gives relatively little information about the character, only how Bond reacts to her.
Academic Christoph Lindner identifies the character of Marc-Ange Draco as an example of those characters who have morals closer to those of the traditional villains, but who act on the side of good in support of Bond; others of this type include Darko Kerim (From Russia, with Love), Tiger Tanaka (You Only Live Twice) and Enrico Colombo ("Risico"). Fellow academic Jeremy Black noted the connection between Draco and World War II; Draco wears the King's medal for resistance fighters. The war reference is a method used by Fleming to differentiate good from evil and raises a question about "the distinction between criminality and legality", according to Black.
Read more about this topic: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words characters and/or themes:
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
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