How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
An Irishman in the service of England, a man suspected of equivocal feelings if not of actual treachery, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon this extraordinary piece of luck: the discovery, capture and perhaps the deaths of two agents of Imperial Germany? (2)
In the world of espionage, everyone's loyalties are suspect. In the middle of one of the most impassioned periods of Irish nationalism, Madden's capturing a German spy helps prove his loyalty to England.
Quote #2
I did not do it for Germany – no! Such a barbarous country is of no importance to me, particularly since it had degraded me by making me become a spy. (8)
Yu Tsun finds himself in the unenviable position of working at a job he finds degrading for a country that he despises. It seems as though working as a spy makes him guilty of betraying... himself.
Quote #3
Furthermore, I knew an Englishman – a modest man – who, for me, is as great as Goethe. I did not speak with him for more than an hour, but during that time, he was Goethe. (8)
The man Yu Tsun most admires (Stephen Albert) is English, and yet it's the English that he is spying against. Is this a betrayal, or merely an indication that true bonds of loyalty don't line up with national boundaries?
Quote #4
I carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. (9)
Yu Tsun's loyalty to his own race leads him to align himself with a group that he despises. Is it worth all the sacrifices he has to make?
Quote #5
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, that soon only soldiers and bandits will be left. (14)
What is an "abomination" if not a betrayal of a sense of human decency? In Yu Tsun's dark dystopia, soldiers and bandits – the people willing to commit these abominations – will be the only ones to survive.
Quote #6
I thought that a man might be an enemy of other men, of the differing moments of other men, but never an enemy of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams, or the West wind. (22)
To Yu Tsun, the natural world is beyond the human world of petty enmities. Gardens have no nationalities and fireflies know no borders.
Quote #7
With proper veneration I listened to these old tales, although perhaps with less admiration for them in themselves than for the fact that they had been thought out by one of my own blood, and that a man of a distant empire had given them back to me, in the last stage of a desperate adventure, on a Western island. (51)
Yu Tsun experiences two potentially contradictory revelations here – that the words of "one of [his] own blood" are particularly valuable to him, and that he can feel a bond of gratitude and friendship with a foreigner.
Quote #8
"In all of them," I enunciated, with a tremor in my voice, "I deeply appreciate and am grateful to you for the restoration of Ts'ui Pen's garden."
"Not in all," he murmured with a smile. "Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures and in one of them I am your enemy." (58-59)
Dr. Albert's offhanded comment that he and Yu Tsun are enemies in some alternate universe is a little bit foreboding. He reminds us that we're not so sure Yu Tsun's intentions are purely friendly.
Quote #9
I had the revolver ready. I fired with the utmost care: Albert fell without a murmur, at once. I swear that his death was instantaneous, as if he had been struck by lightning. (62)
The care that Yu Tsun takes in ensuring that Dr. Albert's death is painless is a manifestation of the gratitude and friendship he feels for the man. Still, is killing him a betrayal?
Quote #10
He knew that my problem was to shout, with my feeble voice, above the tumult of war, the name of the city called Albert, and that I had no other course open to me than to kill someone of that name. He does not know, for no one can, of my infinite penitence and sickness of heart. (68)
In the end, Yu Tsun has been loyal to The Chief and the Germans – but at what cost? Whose loyalty has he betrayed in order to accomplish his mission?