"Looking like a Sunday School boy’’
Karl only appears for a brief time before he is killed but the narrator talks about him and how he reacted when he first meet Control. Karl was asked to come to a dinner attended by Control after an important catch and Karl took the time to dress well. Alec compares Karl’s behavior and his clothes to that of a Sunday School boy, suggesting how much it mattered for Karl the meeting with Control. Through this comparison, Alec also suggests that through different strategies, Control was able to manipulate the people working under him to do almost everything and they reason they were able to do that is because the low level spies wanted to do everything to be accepted and to make sure they were liked by the people in charge. In this sense, Karl is just a child controlled by someone much smarter than he.
Like a concentration camp
On the night when Alec was waiting for Karl, he took the time to contemplate the Berlin wall. That night, he compared the Berlin Wall to a similar structure he saw on various concentration camps. Through this comparison, Alec transmits the idea that the Wall was something akin to a prison, a structure that only divided people even more and that made the people feel isolated.
Going to seed
The process of making someone doubt a person’s character is called in the novel going to seed. The comparison between a spy who distorts his own image and a farmer who plants his seeds is appropriate because the spy, through seeding, also implants certain ideas in a person’s mind and those ideas eventually grow into beliefs.
Some poison in your mind
Alec becomes friends with a woman named Liz who takes care of him during the time he is sick. During those days, Liz tries to make Alec open up and tell her about his experiences and about his view on life. Alec refuses to do it and Liz, despite knowing that Alec will get angry, continues to try and probe him for more information. When Alec refuses to answer, Liz theorizes that Alec has a poison in his mind. This poison is hate and Liz realizes just how much Alec is affected by the hate he has in his mind. The comparison is fitting because it makes the reader understand just how destructive hate can be.
Traitors and Cain
In the seventh chapter, Alec compares the way his agency treated traitors to the way Cain was treated by God in the Biblical story. Through this comparison, Alec wanted to transmit the idea that there was no place for traitors in his world and that they were treated as being the lowest category of people one could encounter. The comparison also lets the reader understand that for traitors, there was no mercy from the agency’s part.
