Plot
Simon McGrath, the narrator and anti-hero of the series, works as an arms dealer whose main job is selling arms to Gambia. Simon claims that he would prefer to work elsewhere, but due to a combination of laziness and cowardice he has failed to change to a job which is less problematic in terms of morality. He tries to do the good thing, such as donating blood and recycling, but he knows that he could do better. He tries to defend himself by saying that if he was not doing the job, then someone else would.
Simon's job puts strains on his relationships. His girlfriend Anna Greig (Joanna Page) wants to settle down and have a family with Simon, but it is mainly because it is easier than trying to find another boyfriend. Simon's sister, Judith (Sarah Smart), who works for Oxfam hates her brother's job and would like to disown him, but she cannot bring herself to do it. Angela (Brigit Forsyth), Simon's mother, does not mind the ethical implications surrounding her son's job as long he has a steady occupation. Simon's main work colleague is Boris Kemal (Lewis MacLeod), who has no problem with the morality with his job, claiming that his work is a humanitarian service, once saying, "Give a man a fish and he can feed himself for a day. Give a man a gun and he can steal fish for the rest of his life." Despite his exotic name, Boris is actually a Scot who lives in Folkestone.
Read more about this topic: Safety Catch
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)