Goldfinger
What are the motifs in Goldfinger by Ian Fleming?
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Death and respnsibility are reoccurring ideas in the story. The novel opens with Bond ruminating over his recent killing of a man involved with a heroin smuggling ring. The man intended to kill Bond, so it is implied that he was justified in responding with lethal force. Nevertheless, Bond seems troubled. He is expected to kill in the line of duty, and is absolved from any legal repercussions, yet he has to face the moral repercussions. Bond reflects on the nature of death and how fragile life is as he replays the scene of the attack of the Mexican drug smuggler in his mind. He begins to think of how the man was an individual one moment, with a name and an existence, and then in an instant had crumpled into nothing.