Hornet Flight - Complex Characters and Motivations

Complex Characters and Motivations

Unlike formula thrillers, the German characters in Hornet Flight are in general quite decent and honourable. Harald's main nemesis, Police Detective Peter Flemming, is a childhood acquaintance, formerly his older brother's best friend turned bitter enemy after a falling out between the families. Detective Flemming, though in some ways quite monstrous, does not lack for psychological depth. An authoritarian personality leads him to regard being a policeman as more than a job - rather, as a Cause and a Mission, almost a religion. In the conditions of 1941 Denmark, it leads him to become a committed Nazi collaborator, indeed sometimes showing more zeal than the Germans themselves.

The struggle which Harald and his friends wage, making enormous sacrifices, is morally ambiguous: they are, in essence, willing to lay their lives on the line so that British planes will be able to bomb the civilian population of the German cities with impunity. Only the vital need to bring down Hitler's monstrous and genocidal regime can justify their actions. Follett brings home the point by having the RAF, using the information which Harald and Karen brought at such high price, set out to bomb Hamburg - where Harald's beloved Jewish aunt and cousin live, who used to come over to merry holidays at Harald's parents' home. At the book's end Harald remains with the gnawing doubt that he may have caused their deaths - and, while not making him doubt the rightness of what he did, it does make him less than jubilant at his well-earned victory.

This novel generated some controversy when a veteran of the Royal Air Force, Alan Frampton, wrote to Follett to complain about a character in the prologue to the story, "Charles Ford" - a black RAF officer. Frampton, who resides in Zimbabwe, claimed that there were no black officers in the RAF, and accused Follett of including the character as a "sop" to black people. Ulric Cross, a black former RAF squadron leader and the man on whom the character of Charles Ford was based, refuted Frampton's claims in an article published in the Trinidad Express. Over 250 Trinidadians alone served in the RAF during World War II.