50 pages • 1 hour read
Graham GreeneThe Third Man
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
After leaving Lime, Martins tells Calloway that he returned to the theater to find Anna. He reports that she was unhappy to see him, expecting more awkward attempts at romance, but he told her instead that he had met Lime. She wept at the news, clearly disturbed. She lamented that death would at least have saved Lime from the threat of further arrest. Martins, hoping to finally win her and change her affections, shows her the photographs of the children harmed by the diluted penicillin. He urges her to help him get Lime to the British zone, where Calloway has jurisdiction to detain him. She refuses, declaring, “I’ll never help you to get Harry. I don’t want to see him again, I don’t want to hear his voice. I don’t want to be touched by him, but I won’t do a thing to harm him” (72). She tells him that her affection is not the issue—her loyalty can’t be altered as his can.
Martins changes the subject to Lime’s capture and what Calloway envisions. Calloway tells him that he’s requesting formal permission to arrest both Kurtz and Lime, and he asks Martins to do his best to deceive Lime. He instructs Martins to call Lime at once and ask to meet, claiming that he’s just left a police interrogation where he was told Harbin’s body has been found. Martins is to then convey the news to Cooler, who will be allowed to escape in the interest of later capturing Kurtz and Lime. Next, Martins is to call Kurtz and claim that he needs to meet with Lime to evade his own arrest. Martins reflects that Lime never rescued him during their youthful escapades, and Calloway thinks, “It was obvious that he had been reviewing the past with care and coming to conclusions” (73). Martins accepts Calloway’s plan, looking again at the photographs of the injured children.
Chapter 16 Summary
Martins warns Cooler that Calloway is aware of the operation and that Lime is alive. Cooler feigns innocence, apologizing for his role in Martins’s arrest and suspicion in Koch’s death. He claims a moral high ground in acting as he had, saying, “The fact that I liked you oughtn’t to stand in the way. A citizen has his duties” (74). Martins leaves, disgusted, after he’s certain that Cooler has heeded his warning.
Calloway decides to have Martins await Lime in a café near the escape to the sewers, with his men stationed nearby. The evening is cold, and Martins grows impatient after a few hours and calls Calloway. Calloway is concerned that the call may look suspicious, and Lime enters as they converse. Lime runs, suspecting that Martins is on the phone with the police. Martins doesn’t alert the police until Lime reaches the sewers. Calloway posits that this is because he’s still torn, that “it was not, I suppose, Lime, the penicillin racketeer who was escaping down the street; it was Harry” (75-76).
The sewers remind Calloway of another world, with their torrents of water and underground river. Lime’s tracks are visible to the pursuing officers, and one of Calloway’s officers, Bates, tells Martins that Lime can’t escape, as the sewer police have arrived and his exit is blocked. He tries to protect Martins, reflecting that he’s far from home, recalling his life in London. Lime shoots at Bates, and Martins tells Bates that he’ll go forward, as he wants to talk to Lime again. Martins tries to convince Lime to surrender, but Lime shoots again, killing Bates. Martins, Calloway recalls, was the only one with a clear view of Lime, as his own officers could have hit Martins by mistake and did not fire. Martins shoots Lime and misses, only wounding him. Lime attempts to climb up and out of the sewer but, too injured, whistles his old song to signal his location to Martins. Unable to let his friend suffer, Martins shoots again, killing Lime. Martins recalls Lime’s last words:
‘Bloody fool,’ he said—that was all: I don’t know whether he meant that for himself—some sort of act of contrition however inadequate (he was a Catholic)—or was it for me—with my thousand a year taxed and my imaginary cattle rustlers who couldn’t even shoot a rabbit clean. Then he began to whimper again. I couldn’t bear it any more and I put a bullet through him’ (79).
Afterward, Martins debates whether Lime was directing his last words at him or calling himself a bloody fool.
Chapter 17 Summary
The book closes with Lime’s real funeral. This time, the weather is warmer, and the day is rainy. Only Calloway, Martins, and Anna attend; Lime’s other associates are missing. Calloway offers Martins a ride, telling him he has “won” and proven Calloway wrong, but Martins feels only drained, defeated, and disillusioned. He rejects the outcome as any kind of victory, insisting, “I’ve lost,” and walks off with Anna, who doesn’t speak to him. Calloway calls him “a very bad shot and a very bad judge of character, but he had a way with Westerns (a trick of tension) and with girls (I wouldn’t know what)” (80). Calloway reflects that the unhappy ending was nearly universal in this story, as Crabbin never secured reimbursement for expenses wasted on the wrong B. Dexter. Calloway reflects, in closing, “Poor Crabbin…Poor all of us when you come to think of it” (80).
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
As the story closes, Martins finds himself beset by failure and realizes that his moral realizations bring few rewards. His revelations can’t change Anna’s love for Lime; it’s somewhere beyond moral considerations. Calloway concocts the strategic plan to exploit the old friendship, and Martins reluctantly agrees. This reluctance has consequences: Martins is too sentimental to alert the police in time for them to arrest Lime, and a fateful chase below ground ensues. Bates, an innocent officer, dies for Martins, who can’t bear to be the direct instrument of his friend’s downfall. In the end, Lime leaves him little choice: He refuses to die alone, though whether this is out of sentiment or instinct is unclear. Throughout the narrative, Martins has sought the moral high ground: First, he’s tried to prove that Calloway is corrupt and Lime is innocent. When he finds that this is impossible, he wants to be Anna’s knight in shining armor and only an indirect participant in Lime’s arrest. In the end, however, he kills his friend, perhaps as a final act of mercy though also in response to his initial poor aim. Lime, then, doesn’t get to continue his criminal enterprise, which may serve as proof of justice in the end, though none of the characters find particular comfort in it.
Calloway tries to argue that Martins has “won”—likely alluding to the successful unmasking of Lime’s initial plan to fake his death. Significantly, Martins refuses to see this as a victory and continues to go after Anna, though she doesn’t indicate that she’ll ever speak to him let alone return his affections. Lime dies, and so too do some of Martins’s illusions—along with the last of his innocence. Calloway is sympathetic to Martins to a degree, attributing his failures to his personality, perhaps as inescapable, and apparently regard the entire affair as a tragedy with moments of farce, as his evocation of Crabbin suggests. The story’s ending refuses the straightforward interpretation of a morality play. Lime’s cynical materialism is not vindicated; he dies in pursuit of wealth. Martins receives no reward for his efforts, and neither does Calloway, who exploited Martins for his own reasons. Vienna’s criminal underworld remains, and its occupants’ postwar moral dilemmas are unsolved. The reader never learns what happens to any of the characters. The only story that ends is the story of a childhood friendship, one that may never have been as true as Rollo Martins envisioned.
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