Graham Greene’s "Heart of Darkness"

Post-war Vienna in "The Third Man"

Abstract

The article analyzes Graham Greene’s The Third Man as a dark allegory of post-World War II Europe. Vienna, occupied by the Allies, becomes the setting for a society in moral and social dissolution. The inconsistencies of the show that this is not really a detective story, but a story about deep ethical and political dilemmas. The article therefore focuses on the portrayal of an economic and legal vacuum that gives rise to the black market, profit-seeking, violence and general lawlessness. Many of Greene’s texts revolve around such places of social disorder, “hearts of darkness” modeled on Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness. The article’s last part analyzes the eponymous figure of “the third man” as a central political fantasy of the Cold War: the possibility of taking a stance of “neutrality” in the great geopolitical conflict. From here, later scenarios and protagonists in Greene’s oeuvre can be framed as attempts to elucidate the tragedy of taking a “third position” in a field of inevitable hostility, one committed only to one's personal convictions and bonds.