The Story Archive

The Third Man

Graham Greene · 1949 CE · Novel · English · Contemporary

A writer of cheap westerns arrives in four-power Vienna on a job offer from an old school friend and is told at the door that the friend was buried that morning. The friend's girl, a British military policeman and a set of disagreeing witnesses give him four accounts of an accident in the street, and a racket in watered penicillin surfaces in all of them. Greene wrote the story as prose first because, as he put it, one cannot reach a film without seeing the people; print followed the picture.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
Crime / NoirMysteryThriller
Theme
BetrayalLoyaltyAppearance vs RealityGuilt & Conscience
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanShadowVillain / Tyrant
Plot structure
MysteryIronic ReversalThe Chase
Symbol / motif
The CityLight & DarkThe Labyrinth
Conflict
vs Personvs Self
Mode / tone
NoirIronicElegiac
Culture / tradition
English

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