Themes
Like most good spy novels, this book has a dangerous train journey, a shiny MacGuffin that everyone is chasing, and a touch of romance. In this book, however, Americans do not play a part in international intrigue. The West (and America in particular) is portrayed as an outsider who doesn’t know anything about what is going on in the East. Gates and Dillaway, the two Americans are oblivious to the machinations of the Japanese and the Russian armies as they wrestle for control of China. Millicent Bell, Marquand’s biographer said that Gates is,
…a man under a cloud, whose mission to China is purely personal, and who is so indifferent to politics that he allows himself to be thought a Japanese spy.
Moto feels a deep kinship towards Americans, often referring to his time spent there. Even though Moto doesn’t always understand their actions or motivations he is able to manipulate Gates into fitting into his plans. Major Ahara, Moto’s political opposite, doesn’t like America and looks forward to the day they are at war. These multiple factions within the Japanese government are often referred to in Marquand’s Moto novels and play a part in making Mr. Moto’s job that much more difficult by giving him many fronts to fight against. This duality may also have given the pre-WWII reading audience the chance to see the Japanese as multi-dimensional people at a time when Japan was still mysterious. While we can never fully understand its impact at the time, we can still read this book as an exciting and exotic adventure.
Read more about this topic: Mr. Moto Is So Sorry
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)