The other important plot insight offered by this description is Martins' vulnerability to women in particular, which with the introduction of the deceptive Anna to the narrative, would become a prime operant in his misjudgments and entanglements. The resolution which finds them somehow coming together suggests that this vulnerability is damning in Martins, who somehow finds a way to forgive the moral trespasses of this alluring woman even as he felt compelled to kill his own former mentor in Harry Lime.

The story complies with a strange set of moral prerogatives though, a point reinforced throughout and no doubt owing to the decayed and splintered post-war Vienna which it had made as its setting. As Greene writes, "if you are to understand this strange rather sad story you must have an impression at least of the background -- the smashed dreary city of Vienna divided up in zones among the...
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