Characters and Themes
The main character of the novel is James Bond. Continuation Bond author Raymond Benson described Amis's Bond as a humourless interpretation of the character that Fleming used in his earlier novels. Benson describes this personality as a natural continuation of the Bond developed in the final three Fleming novels. In all three novels, the events take a toll on Bond: he loses his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; he loses his memory in Japan in You Only Live Twice; and he is brainwashed in Russia, is de-programmed by MI6 and almost dies from Francisco Scaramanga's poisoned bullet in The Man with the Golden Gun. Benson identifies Bond's desire for revenge as a central theme to the novel. The plot centres around Bond's need to revenge the death of the Hammonds and M's kidnapping. Benson describes this as particularly striking: "Bond is particularly brutal in achieving his goal ... The revenge is very satisfying. This is Bond at his toughest."
Benson considered that M's character evokes an emotional response from the reader because of the change from his usual, business like-manner to a semi-catatonic state upon being kidnapped. However, Amis envisioned something different for the character: he did not like M and, as one reviewer pointed out that in The James Bond Dossier, he had "spent a chapter running him down." The main villain of the novel is Colonel Sun Liang-tan. Sun is a member of the Special Activities Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army as well as a sadist and skilled torturer. Raymond Benson called him "very worthy of inclusion in the Bond saga".
Raymond Benson notes increased political intrigue in the novel compared to earlier Bond novels. In Colonel Sun, Bond acts in concert with the Russians against the Chinese, which demonstrates one of the main themes of the book: a peacekeeping between nations. Military historian Jeremy Black describes the novel reflecting a shift in the balance of world power away from two party Cold War politics. To accentuate this idea of Oriental threat, the novel demonstrates a disregard by the Chinese for human life, a position similar to the treatment of the East in Fleming's Dr. No. Black also notes an emotional and social sadness throughout Colonel Sun. The social sadness is a reaction to the culture of modernity and mourning what was being lost in its place. This treatment by Amis is similar to Fleming's nostalgia in describing Paris in "From a View to a Kill".
Read more about this topic: Colonel Sun
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