The Human Factor

Home from the colonies (South Africa), Castle is now a minor functionary in British Intelligence, a middle-aged man devoted to his black wife Sarah and her young son. Castle lives in "angst": a double agent, he leaks information to the Communists. Castle's superiors suspect Davis, Castle's woebegone office mate hungering for romance; but the reader knows early that Castle is the traitor. The narrative is built on Greene's familiar structure: the respected man, secretly living outside society's laws, finally caught by the corrupted law of that society. The reader's sympathies are with the outlaws; a basically decent human being who does the wrong thing for the right reasons.