Jim Wormold: The Value Of Faith
According to the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “faith is the allegiance to duty or a person: loyalty (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions.”# The concept of faith can cleverly be disguised as a purely religious byproduct; possessed primarily by the followers of a religious belief system or spiritual path. However, faith simply means a strong trust in something or someone. Faith is to commit oneself to act based on life experience to warrant rationalization, but without sufficient proof. To have a faith in someone or something also involves an act of will to persevere when the odds are at great length. Even though the protagonist, Jim Wormold doesn’t have religious faith and his actions motivated entirely by desperation to have the approval of an absent wife and spoiled daughter, he is the only character that doesn’t exhibit blind faith.
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Faith is closely related to loyalty, as evidenced by the ideal of ”fidelity to one’s promises” or an inherent “faithfulness”.
Faith is not an uniquely religious principle, but it is a byproduct of entrusting loyalty. And both loyalty and faithfulness have connections to trustworthiness. Loyalty cannot exist without faith. Wormold’s faith is engrossed to the loyalty of his daughter. As stated in Chapter 2, “Unlike Wormold, who believed in nothing, Milly was a Catholic: he had been made to promise her mother, he supposed, was of no faith at all, but she had left a Catholic on his hands. It brought Milly closer to Cuba than he could come himself” (Greene, 15). When marrying, Wormold promised his wife they would raise their children as Catholics. Even when his wife leaves he continues to raise Milly as a Catholic. Although it appears that he himself is absent of a religious faith, his actions to ensure she is Catholic are very significant. Wormold failed in his marriage, but doesn’t want to fail in raising his daughter with the right
upbringing.
Wormold is wholly dedicated and governed by the main woman in his life, his daughter Milly. She is the entire reason for him becoming involved in the Secret Service. By all accounts he should have rejected Hawthorne's offer. He has no background or training of any kind that would qualify him to be a spy. However, he sees a chance to make some money and he exploits it. He not only takes the basic pay of $300 offered him, but goes out of his way to make as much money as possible by creating phantom agents and missions all requiring more money, which of course he uses on his daughter. The following quote presents the reasoning why Wormold accepts Hawthorne’s offer. Milly wants a horse and a country club membership for her seventeenth birthday although she knows Wormold cannot afford the extra expenses of such a gift.
…,‘Oh, I knew you’d take it like this,’ Milly said. ‘I knew it in my heart of hearts. I said two novenas to make it right, but they haven’t worked. I was so careful too. I was in a state of grace all the time I said them. I’ll never believe in a novena again. Never. Never.’ (…) He had no faith himself, but he never wanted by any action of his own to weaken hers. Now he felt a fearful responsibility; at any moment she would be denying the existence of God. Ancient promises he had made came up out of the past to weaken him. (18)
In the given quote, Milly begins to doubt whether her prayers will be answered. It is obvious she takes advantage of her father and asks for anything even if she knows her father cannot afford it. In fear of Milly becoming skeptical of her Catholic faith, Wormold keeps the horse as he had made "ancient promises to his wife" to "raise a good Catholic". Wormold’s fear of his daughter, or at least the fear of her disapproval is brought to realization. Wormold has a great love for his daughter and wants to give her everything she wants so that he can succeed as a single parent and remedy faults he committed to his wife. He sees direct parallels to his daughter with his wife. Wormold failed at his marriage, but he intends to succeed in rearing their child. Several times throughout the novel, Milly manipulates and controls her father with a similarity to her mother. He feels distant and detached from her world and often gives into her requests.
“He was glad that she [Milly] could still accept fairy stories: a virgin who bore a child, pictures that wept or spoke words of love in the dark. Hawthorne and his kind were equally credulous, but what they swallowed were nightmares, grotesque stories out of science fiction" (75). Wormold compares the significance of Milly's Catholic faith to that of a childhood fairytale as it ensures she maintains her innocence and faith in something without skepticism. This critique of Catholicism is similar to the Santa Claus myth. Parents lie to their children about the existence of an imaginary entity in hopes to instill principles of goodness and morality in their children. Wormolds’ lack of religious faith is a result of a moral discrepancy. His wife was apparently a devote Catholic but still managed to overlook her marriage and run off with another man. Religion for the protagonist, Wormold is irrelevant. On the other hand, to have a faith that things will continue being advantageous isn’t considered far-fetched.
Our Man In Havana takes place against the background of the Cold War. The British Secret Service is operated by heresy and the fear of expansion of the Communist regime. The novel’s setting in Havana Cuba is important because the story is written and takes place just before the revolution led by Fidel Castro. At the time of the story, Cuba is a largely poor country. There are many European and American tourists and businesspeople on the island who have their personal agendas and respective loyalties. Wormold remarks about this in Part 5 of Chapter 4:
"You are loyal."
"Who to?"
"To Milly. I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?" (195)
The paranoia surrounding the Cold War is what drives the Secret Service to recruit agents so quickly without giving them proper training. Loyalty is a recurring theme throughout Greene’s novel and questions the validity of the ability to have a loyalty to a country when residing in another. Espionage is rampant because the fear of a Communist threat appears imminent. Consequently, they are so desperate for any information that they are very excited when they get Wormold's fake reports. Their desire to outmaneuver the Communists overshadows their common sense. The British Secret Service engages in a prime example of blind faith with enlisting Jim Wormold.
Hawthorne, the British secret agent who recruits Wormold, is not revered as an outstanding agent and isn’t trusted by his superiors. This may be a result in his questionable judgment for selecting new recruits. Although the British secret Service prides itself to “employ agents who were men of good social standing,” Hawthorne lies about Wormold’s true occupation and social standing by embellishing it: “ ‘Oh, he imports, you know, Machinery, that sort of thing.’ It was always important to one’s own career to employ agents who were men of good social standing. The petty details on the secret file dealing with the store in Lamparilla Street would never, in ordinary circumstances, reach this basement-room” (52). Later, Hawthorne suspects Wormold's reports may be falsified, but does nothing about it.
In Part 4 of Chapter 2 Dr. Hasselbacher states, “At first they promised me they were planning nothing. You have been very useful to them. They knew about you from the very beginning, Mr. Wormold, but they didn't take you seriously. They even thought you might be inventing your reports. But then you changed your codes and your staff increased. The British Secret Service would not be so easily deceived as all that, would it?" (146) Faith is a suspension of disbelief. This is vital for believing in things that can't be proven, and as such is a personal decision for the individual. The function of the British Secret Service is to rely heavily on sources that cannot be easily confirmed. They have to put much trust in people like Wormold. While it is likely that most of them are reliable and diligent intelligence gatherers, there are few checks and balances in place to confirm they are not. The information they provide is obviously secret and not easily verifiable. This is dangerous because decision makers have to much of their faith on these sources when making serious decisions. When wrong information gets through the system, whether it is intentionally wrong or not, it resulted in disastrous consequences as several people do in fact die indirectly because of Wormold's fake reports. The Secret Service is supposed to be a highly competent organization, but in reality they are unwittingly relying on Wormold who is neither qualified nor a loyal patriot of the British Crown.
“If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”# The idea of faith being either religious or not is purely semantics. For Wormold it is not a matter if he has faith, but who or what he places his faith in. Throughout the novel, Wormold exhibits optimism that he will be able to preserve a decent livelihood for himself and his daughter through playing up the insecurities and paranoia of the British secret service. Through the depiction of Wormold, Greene's Our Man In Havana suggests that true faith is not blinded by fear of attack of an unknown enemy or mythology of an ominous being, but loyalty to one’s individual morals and loved ones.
Faith is closely related to loyalty, as evidenced by the ideal of ”fidelity to one’s promises” or an inherent “faithfulness”.
Faith is not an uniquely religious principle, but it is a byproduct of entrusting loyalty. And both loyalty and faithfulness have connections to trustworthiness. Loyalty cannot exist without faith. Wormold’s faith is engrossed to the loyalty of his daughter. As stated in Chapter 2, “Unlike Wormold, who believed in nothing, Milly was a Catholic: he had been made to promise her mother, he supposed, was of no faith at all, but she had left a Catholic on his hands. It brought Milly closer to Cuba than he could come himself” (Greene, 15). When marrying, Wormold promised his wife they would raise their children as Catholics. Even when his wife leaves he continues to raise Milly as a Catholic. Although it appears that he himself is absent of a religious faith, his actions to ensure she is Catholic are very significant. Wormold failed in his marriage, but doesn’t want to fail in raising his daughter with the right
upbringing.
Wormold is wholly dedicated and governed by the main woman in his life, his daughter Milly. She is the entire reason for him becoming involved in the Secret Service. By all accounts he should have rejected Hawthorne's offer. He has no background or training of any kind that would qualify him to be a spy. However, he sees a chance to make some money and he exploits it. He not only takes the basic pay of $300 offered him, but goes out of his way to make as much money as possible by creating phantom agents and missions all requiring more money, which of course he uses on his daughter. The following quote presents the reasoning why Wormold accepts Hawthorne’s offer. Milly wants a horse and a country club membership for her seventeenth birthday although she knows Wormold cannot afford the extra expenses of such a gift.
…,‘Oh, I knew you’d take it like this,’ Milly said. ‘I knew it in my heart of hearts. I said two novenas to make it right, but they haven’t worked. I was so careful too. I was in a state of grace all the time I said them. I’ll never believe in a novena again. Never. Never.’ (…) He had no faith himself, but he never wanted by any action of his own to weaken hers. Now he felt a fearful responsibility; at any moment she would be denying the existence of God. Ancient promises he had made came up out of the past to weaken him. (18)
In the given quote, Milly begins to doubt whether her prayers will be answered. It is obvious she takes advantage of her father and asks for anything even if she knows her father cannot afford it. In fear of Milly becoming skeptical of her Catholic faith, Wormold keeps the horse as he had made "ancient promises to his wife" to "raise a good Catholic". Wormold’s fear of his daughter, or at least the fear of her disapproval is brought to realization. Wormold has a great love for his daughter and wants to give her everything she wants so that he can succeed as a single parent and remedy faults he committed to his wife. He sees direct parallels to his daughter with his wife. Wormold failed at his marriage, but he intends to succeed in rearing their child. Several times throughout the novel, Milly manipulates and controls her father with a similarity to her mother. He feels distant and detached from her world and often gives into her requests.
“He was glad that she [Milly] could still accept fairy stories: a virgin who bore a child, pictures that wept or spoke words of love in the dark. Hawthorne and his kind were equally credulous, but what they swallowed were nightmares, grotesque stories out of science fiction" (75). Wormold compares the significance of Milly's Catholic faith to that of a childhood fairytale as it ensures she maintains her innocence and faith in something without skepticism. This critique of Catholicism is similar to the Santa Claus myth. Parents lie to their children about the existence of an imaginary entity in hopes to instill principles of goodness and morality in their children. Wormolds’ lack of religious faith is a result of a moral discrepancy. His wife was apparently a devote Catholic but still managed to overlook her marriage and run off with another man. Religion for the protagonist, Wormold is irrelevant. On the other hand, to have a faith that things will continue being advantageous isn’t considered far-fetched.
Our Man In Havana takes place against the background of the Cold War. The British Secret Service is operated by heresy and the fear of expansion of the Communist regime. The novel’s setting in Havana Cuba is important because the story is written and takes place just before the revolution led by Fidel Castro. At the time of the story, Cuba is a largely poor country. There are many European and American tourists and businesspeople on the island who have their personal agendas and respective loyalties. Wormold remarks about this in Part 5 of Chapter 4:
"You are loyal."
"Who to?"
"To Milly. I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?" (195)
The paranoia surrounding the Cold War is what drives the Secret Service to recruit agents so quickly without giving them proper training. Loyalty is a recurring theme throughout Greene’s novel and questions the validity of the ability to have a loyalty to a country when residing in another. Espionage is rampant because the fear of a Communist threat appears imminent. Consequently, they are so desperate for any information that they are very excited when they get Wormold's fake reports. Their desire to outmaneuver the Communists overshadows their common sense. The British Secret Service engages in a prime example of blind faith with enlisting Jim Wormold.
Hawthorne, the British secret agent who recruits Wormold, is not revered as an outstanding agent and isn’t trusted by his superiors. This may be a result in his questionable judgment for selecting new recruits. Although the British secret Service prides itself to “employ agents who were men of good social standing,” Hawthorne lies about Wormold’s true occupation and social standing by embellishing it: “ ‘Oh, he imports, you know, Machinery, that sort of thing.’ It was always important to one’s own career to employ agents who were men of good social standing. The petty details on the secret file dealing with the store in Lamparilla Street would never, in ordinary circumstances, reach this basement-room” (52). Later, Hawthorne suspects Wormold's reports may be falsified, but does nothing about it.
In Part 4 of Chapter 2 Dr. Hasselbacher states, “At first they promised me they were planning nothing. You have been very useful to them. They knew about you from the very beginning, Mr. Wormold, but they didn't take you seriously. They even thought you might be inventing your reports. But then you changed your codes and your staff increased. The British Secret Service would not be so easily deceived as all that, would it?" (146) Faith is a suspension of disbelief. This is vital for believing in things that can't be proven, and as such is a personal decision for the individual. The function of the British Secret Service is to rely heavily on sources that cannot be easily confirmed. They have to put much trust in people like Wormold. While it is likely that most of them are reliable and diligent intelligence gatherers, there are few checks and balances in place to confirm they are not. The information they provide is obviously secret and not easily verifiable. This is dangerous because decision makers have to much of their faith on these sources when making serious decisions. When wrong information gets through the system, whether it is intentionally wrong or not, it resulted in disastrous consequences as several people do in fact die indirectly because of Wormold's fake reports. The Secret Service is supposed to be a highly competent organization, but in reality they are unwittingly relying on Wormold who is neither qualified nor a loyal patriot of the British Crown.
“If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”# The idea of faith being either religious or not is purely semantics. For Wormold it is not a matter if he has faith, but who or what he places his faith in. Throughout the novel, Wormold exhibits optimism that he will be able to preserve a decent livelihood for himself and his daughter through playing up the insecurities and paranoia of the British secret service. Through the depiction of Wormold, Greene's Our Man In Havana suggests that true faith is not blinded by fear of attack of an unknown enemy or mythology of an ominous being, but loyalty to one’s individual morals and loved ones.