Comment on theme

Good and evil is not easily distinguished when focused solely on the events of The Spy and The Traitor, however, Macintyre frames the events to draw clear lines between the two. Macintyre tells the story from Oleg Gordievsky's perspective, a man who turns against the KGB in favour of the Brits in order to put an end to communism. Throughout the book, Macintyre touches on the terrors that the Soviet Union carried out over the course of the Cold War, and frames the communist regime as the underlying source of evil. However, by definition, Gordievsky betrayed the country in which he was from, and committed acts of treason on a daily basis. Macintyre has a clear motive in the book, and while it would be apt to agree with him, readers should be aware of this narrator bias.