The Bourne Identity Flashcards
Themes (The Bourne identity)
- Identity
- Trust and betrayal
=> Bourne doesn’t know who to trust - Redemption
=> Bourne gets a second chance to turn away from being an assasin - Pursuit of truth
- Survival
=> trying to find is place in the world
Author (The Bourne Identity)
Robert Ludlum, Robert Ludlum specialized in spy novels where one character goes up against thousands of bad guys plus your maiden aunt and possibly a puppy or two. The Bourne Identity is typical in that there are just bushels of characters. They pop out of the page like semi-anonymous, barely differentiated groundhogs. Then Bourne shoots them, and they give little groundhog squeals and zoop back down into their holes as another groundhog pops up.
published (The Bourne Identity)
1980
Jason Bourne
(The Bourne Identity)
=> main character, lost his memories, has multiple identities and sick combat skills
= john michal kane
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Marie St. Jacques
(The Bourne Identity)
=> a Canadian economist, gets kidnapped by Jason, initially hostile towards Jason, later wants to help him regain his memories, almost gets raped by Carlos’s goon, Jason saves her, ally later love intrest
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Carlos
(The Bourne Identity)
=> birth name=Ramirez Sanches, son of a Venezuelan Communist lawyer = Carlos the Jackal, the roughest, toughest assassin in Europe = René Bergeron, an up-and-coming fashion designer = Father Manuel = some world-famous figure or other—though we don’t find out which one, assassin hired to kill Jason
=> gets defeated by Jason,
=>what makes him bad and Bourne good,
=> Carlos the Jackal is an terrorist named Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, currently serving multiple life sentences in prison for the murder of 14 people. The real Carlos is a Marxist who was involved with the PLO and anti-Israeli terror. Except for the name and a handful of biographical details, though, he has little or nothing in common with the Carlos in The Bourne Identity.
=> is out to kill Jason
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The Professor
(The Bourne Identity)
=> assassin hired to kill Jason
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Alexander Conklin
(The Bourne Identity)
=> a CIA officer, trying to capture/kill Bourne, involved in Bournes past and has a complex relationship with him
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David Webb
(The Bourne Identity)
=> in memories of Treadstone Seventy-One, the new identity of Jason Bourne so he can start a new life with Marie
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General Villiers
(The Bourne Identity)
=> wounded older man who shows up toward the end of the novel. Villiers is wounded in that his son has been killed—and also, we later learn, in that his young second wife is actually Carlos’s lover and has been betraying him, which he finds understandably upsetting. In case you missed it, this woman is the lover and accomplice of the guy who killed Villiers’s son. Villiers helps Bourne by spying on his wife, and (eventually) by vouching for him to the American embassy. He’s an flawed surrogate father. More important than Washburn, because his experience as a father mirrors Bourne’s own: Villiers’s son was a politician assassinated by Carlos, and Bourne’s son was killed in Cambodia by a bomb dropped from a rogue airplane. Both of them have lives marked by violence and loss.
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Geoffrey Washburn
(The Bourne Identity)
=> a doctor, is wounded in that he’s a drunk. He helps Bourne by patching him up after he’s been shot and dropped in the ocean. Flawed surrogate father, An old drunk doctor with a heart of gold. He gives Bourne a passport and papers to alter as well as some sage advice, plus the occasional use of his name.
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Marquis de Chamford
(The Bourne Identity)
=> A rich nobleman who cheats on his wife with prostitutes. Bourne learns about his infidelity and uses the knowledge to rob him, which finances his trip to Zurich.
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Johann
(The Bourne Identity)
=> One of Carlos’s hired killers. He sees Bourne’s face in Zurich and is then sent to Paris to identify him. In Paris, Bourne kills him.
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Herr Stossel
(The Bourne Identity)
=> The desk clerk at the hotel where Bourne stays in Zurich. He knows Bourne because Bourne has stayed at the hotel before, and he inadvertently helps him figure out that his last name is “Bourne.”
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Angélique Villiers
(The Bourne Identity)
=> General Villiers’s wife, and also Carlos’s cousin and lover. She married Villiers at Carlos’s command. Villiers finds out because of Bourne and eventually kills her.
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