Characters and Themes
The central character of the novel is James Bond. In The Man with the Golden Gun, he appears with a different personality from the previous stories and is robot-like, according to author of the "continuation" Bond novels, Raymond Benson. Benson also noted that Bond's character had not been developed any further than in the previous books. Academic Jeremy Black noted that when given two opportunities to kill Scaramanga in cold blood, he cannot bring himself to do it. The first time this happens, is when Bond sits in a car behind Scaramanga; the method of killing would be to shoot him in the back of the head and this is compared to the technique used by both the KGB and Nazis. According to Black, Bond has to rise above the actions and act more suitably for a British ficitonal hero. Once the mission is completed, Bond is offered the KCMG, but he refuses the honour and reflects on his own name, "a quiet, dull, anonymous name", which had been Fleming's aim when he first named the character. Benson also points out that the touches of humour displayed by Bond in the previous novels disappeared and he appeared in the book as cold and emotionless.
For the first time in the Bond canon, M's full name of "Admiral Sir Miles Messervy KCMG" was finally revealed. Despite being the target of the failed assassination attempt, not only does M not press charges against Bond, he sends him out on further missions.
According to Benson, main adversary of the novel, Francisco Scaramanga, is more a henchman than a major adversary and "a second-rate, smalltime crook who happens to have gotten lucky with his shooting." Comentale, Watt and Willman note that Scaramanga had the same character profile as Herr von Hammerstein, the former Gestapo officer who is the chief of counterintelligence for the Cuban secret service in "For Your Eyes Only".
There are two main themes of note that appear in the novel. The first is that with Scaramanga providing the Rastafarians with drugs in return for fires in the sugar plantations, there is the return of the theme used in "Risico", of drugs being used for political purposes to undermine the West. This was part of a wider conspiracy by Scaramanga and his KGB connection, Hendricks, to destabilise the region by a campaign of industrial sabotage against companies based in Jamaica, including Reynolds Metal, Kaiser Bauxite and Aluminia.
Jeremy Black notes that the independent inquiry at the end of the novel, conducted in Bond's hospital bedroom, was undertaken by the Jamaican judiciary and the CIA and MI6 were recorded as acting "under the closest liaison and direction of the Jamaican CID"; Bond and Leiter are also awarded the Jamaican Police Medal for "Services to the Independent State of Jamaica." Black notes that this was the new world of a non-colonial, independent Jamaica, underlining the collapse of the British Empire.
Read more about this topic: List Of James Bond Allies In The Man With The Golden Gun
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