If one look could say it all, it would be this one.
Rollo Martins and Harry Lime were best friends,
but was this friendship between Martins and Lime or Rollo and Harry? Does Rollo hate Lime, or does Martins despise
Harry? Such is the confusion and
questioning we are faced with when Greene uses the first and last names of
these two main characters, throughout The Third Man culminating
with the decision by Rollo Martins to help catch and eventually kill Harry
Lime. He uses this distinction to
display the differing personality traits of both Rollo Martins and Harry Lime.
When
Calloway, the narrator, first meets with Rollo Martins, he notes that there
seems to be two distinct personalities to him.
He distinguishes these two sides by uses both Rollo Martins’s first and
last name to show his thought process.
While Rollo “wanted to hit out” (316) against
Calloway, “Martins was steady, careful” (316).
Martins was not “quite the mug that Rollo had made out” (316). Here, Greene shows us Rollo Martins’s two
main character traits, steadiness and rashness.
Because these two traits differ so greatly, Greene uses the distinction
between his first and last names almost as if Rollo Martins has a split
personality with two different characters determining what he will do. This distinction among names shows up at the
very end of the story as Rollo Martins chases Lime.
Martins chases Lime and threatens to corner him in the sewers and alert the
police, he stops for a second and again we see his two personalities as well as
Harry Lime’s two personalities determine the outcome. In the end Rollo Martins decides to act, but
too late. He lets Harry Lime escape into
the sewers because he sees him as “not, I suppose, Lime the penicillin
racketeer” (377), but Harry his former friend.
Again, we see a split within a character. Even in the end, Martins seems unsure of
whether Lime is a villain or a friend.
It seems like Martins, if only for a moment, still considered “Harry”
his friend and was unwilling to have him shot over “Lime’s” crimes. Later on in the sewer, however, Martins realizes
Lime is about to escape and shoots him.
Rollo Martins’s momentary hesitation followed by his killing makes us
wonder though, who was the one who finally condemned Harry Lime? Was it “Martins” the steady one who realized
Lime was truly evil, or was it “Rollo” who impulsively lashed out at Lime when
given the chance? While it seems like
only two main characters face off in the final scene, with Greene showing us
these multiple personalities of the characters it feels like four!
Thus, my question for discussion
is: Why does Rollo Martins finally decide to kill Harry Lime?
1 comment:
I think there were a couple reasons at the end that caused Rollo Martins to kill Harry Lime. While I do believe that Martins, on some level, came to the conclusion that Lime must not escape, I believe that a pure fear for his own life was the main reason. Lime shot at Martins, and wounded the officer that was with him. Martins' sudden realization of mortality (by seeing a life taken) coupled with the ongoing threat of himself being killed, I believe, is what forced him to shoot Lime. He did so instinctively to save his own life.
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