Our Man in Havana

We are now in the most tense and action-filled part of the novel, which takes place entirely at night. Greene’s opening line is suggestive: “Wormold unlocked the door. The street-lamp over the way vaguely disclosed the vacuum cleaners standing around like tombs” (121). The line signals that death will be a real threat to our characters. Wormold suddenly realizes the serious consequences of his actions and knows he must redress them. He is fully lost in the absurdity of his situation: “He was tempted to tell [Beatrice] everything, but what was ‘everything’? He no longer knew” (125). Wormold must go through the pretense of visiting the Shanghai Theatre to find “Teresa,” even though she is a made-up character. The fact that a real girl named Teresa becomes caught up in this chaos shows how individuals are controlled by outside forces in a random and absurd way.

The scene in the Shanghai Theatre is drawn in garish colors; Greene emphasizes the seamy side of life in Havana where prostitution and lewd entertainment flourish. As Wormold enters the backstage dressing area, Greene writes that “it was like a medieval inferno full of smoke and naked women” (128). Typical of Greene’s comical juxtaposition of the profane and the religious, Wormold muses: “Perhaps after all there would be no one here called Teresa, but he wished that he had not chosen do popular a saint” (128).

As Wormold and Beatrice shuffle Teresa out of the building, the policeman on duty “ostentatiously” looks in the opposite direction (131), thus reinforcing the novel’s image of the police as corrupt. The scene with Wormold, Professor Sanchez and his lover is another scene of misunderstanding stretched out for comical effect.

This long nocturnal section of the novel concludes with Wormold’s visit to Hasselbacher, who has retreated into nostalgia for his past life. The old military costume he wears is comically ill-fitting and shows the doctor in a humorously pathetic light—a man whose dreams are all spent and who will, in fact, soon be killed. Hasselbacher’s last words to Wormold are to advise him to protect Milly. Handing him his copy of Tales from Shakespeare, he tells him “Here is the Lamb”; the line could be read as symbolically referring to the presence of Christ guiding Wormold—a moment of Christian symbolism typical of Greene. Wormold’s response that he will no longer be needing the book tells us that he intends to bring his spy work to an end.

In the Interlude, Secret Service officials are shown eating a fine meal in complacent comfort while Wormold and others suffer (151-53). This shows the fact that they are out of touch and indifferent to the fate of the individuals who work for them.