Characters and Themes
Author of the "continuation" Bond stories, Raymond Benson, noted that in "The Living Daylights" Bond's thoughts on killing are examined once again, showing that although 007 did not like doing it, he considered that he must as part of his duty to complete an assignment. Once the mission is completed, with Bond deliberately not killing the assassin, there is an attitude of complacency with Bond shrugging off his colleague's complaints about the incident. Academic Jeremy Black sees the colleague, the officious Captain Spender, as the antithesis of Bond and an echo of Colonel Schreiber, the head of security at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), who appeared in "From a View to a Kill".
In the act of not killing the assassin, the theme of disobedience is raised in "The Living Daylights", with Bond calling what he has to do as "murder" and subsequently dismisses his actions by saying "with any luck it will cost me my Double-0 number". Raymond Benson considered that "Octopussy" was a morality tale, with greed bringing repercussions years later to the main protagonist, Dexter Smythe.
Read more about this topic: Octopussy And The Living Daylights
Famous quotes containing the words characters and/or themes:
“For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“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)