Le Carré mirrors Annabel’s coerced submission with Issa’s captivity to expose liberal complicity

Evidence

Annabel at first seems, to the banker Tommy Brue, a “sovereign young woman,” capable and determined. However, her actual autonomy is shown to be severely limited, not simply by the repressive legal framework with which she deals professionally but also when she is forcibly co-opted by Bachmann and made to assist in his plan to use Issa to draw out Abdullah. If Issa is a kind of prisoner, even while he is still at large, Annabel comes to be owned and manipulated by Bachmann after he has coerced her to cooperate. In a play on the popular understanding of the meaning of the name “Islam,” Annabel is required to “submit” when first abducted by Bachmann’s team (195). She is held in detention while Bachmann explains the realities of her situation: “Nobody, not even Issa, can describe to you what it feels like to lose your freedom, but now you are beginning to learn” (194). With both Annabel and Tommy now acting at the behest of German intelligence, there is a double irony at work when the released Annabel assures Issa, “We would do anything on earth to set you free” (207). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 330

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘submit’ etymology of ‘Islam’ is deployed as a reading device — a pun with analytical weight, worth keeping as a critical vocabulary tool.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own close reading of Hamid as evidence — here is the competing model of a liberal character co-opted by state power.