Literary and Film Examples

A Literary Example by Rosa Membrado:

The Assassin Who Gave Up His Gun

Author: Howard Fast The Key, Victoria, 1999

This novel is a timeless portrait of the established powers and the relationship between the individual and power, within the framework of a totalitarian political-social system where the protagonist serves as its executing arm. It expressively portrays the psychology of a cold and calculating professional assassin, Richard Breckner, who undergoes a profound transformation upon learning of love, which leads him to pain, surrender, and death.

The first part focuses on aspects of the character related to power, while the second centers on love.

We meet Richard in action, doing his job for his country's secret services. We immediately grasp his self-sufficiency, confident in his ability to carry out orders. His efficiency is unquestionable, and no one doubts it.

Breckner’s relationship with the organization, his superiors, and subordinates reveals different facets of his character, particularly of the Sexual 6 character.

Breckner is not a likable character. Beneath his restrained and mechanically correct demeanor, arrogance is perceptible, and he earns animosity from those who, knowing themselves to be superior, find no respect in him and perceive that they are not recognized as authority figures. His boss sets the tone: "Being smart won’t win the Department's sympathy." Meanwhile, those who know him aren’t sure what to think or feel about him.

Despite this, Breckner forms a mutually respectful relationship with a superior who sees trust as "a small word for little people," while respect is something entirely different. But Breckner doesn’t seek his superior’s respect; he prefers to know that he trusts him, just as he trusts the Department—the secret service for which he works—almost as a religion.

The lack of self-confidence fuels his need to believe and trust in something greater—what Breckner assimilates to the idea of religion—a higher power that knows, controls, and to whom one can surrender. For Breckner, this manifests in his admiration for the hierarchy of the organization. This belief allows him to commit fully to the organization with true faith. Although he claims to work for money, in reality, it is the sense of belonging and security that the job provides, becoming his religion—something he performs with dedication and passion. You can recognize idealism and search for justice, or a supreme truth, that can restore certainty or a superior authority that assures him he is on the side of the just.

Regarding the compromise between respect and trust—two values for the Sexual 6—it’s notable that someone who finds it as difficult to trust others as he does to trust himself, considers himself deserving of absolute trust, something beyond respect.

Breckner venerates pure reason as authentic authority, and objectivity is an aspiration that keeps him distant from the emotional world. On the contrary, discomfort manifests in his body—through stiffness, anxiety, or mental pressure—but he struggles to surrender to what he feels, making him unaware of concrete emotions or pain. His inner world has become "petrified."

Thus, the protagonist doubts his own perceptions. Though he senses that something is wrong, he’s unsure and insists on "not looking at himself." He states, “I don’t know how I feel. [... I do what I do].” He sees himself as a machine. It embarrasses him if he feels bad—an inadequacy, since he must always be ready for battle.

Just as he is comfortable away from himself, he also distances himself from human contact, absorbed in the world of his abilities, which he offers to the world. His actions are disconnected from emotion. He acts in response to release anxiety or fear—a "reactive" gesture. By not connecting with his emotions or the deeper meaning of his feelings, his body expresses what he’s not aware of.

His expression is cold, harsh, and confrontational, reflecting his anger. He knows he is highly competent and superior to others, as emotional control enables him to carry out his duties efficiently.

Emotional control is directed at those who seem superior, revealing ambivalence toward authority, which fluctuates between self-control and secret obedience. As a professional, he is completely sure of his thoughts and opinions, but a cold look from authority may cause

him to revert to a withdrawn, subservient position. It’s a look that brings him back in time to reconnect with his fear, placing him in a small, introspective, and withdrawn corner of the world, where he goes unnoticed—better not to be seen in order to live in peace.

Breckner speaks harshly and aggressively to subordinates or anyone he deems beneath him to assert his position of power. There are moments where he feels strong, brave, magnanimous, and important.

Being a character trait to feel strong, brave, and great, Breckner expresses megalomania as follows:

... And when the helicopter took off from the platform and people looked like ants on the street, I felt like a god, full of power and strength. I felt good, and I told myself that if I went back, I would sit with the psychologists and tell them that this had been a moment when I truly felt good.

This is something he experiences secretly, as the most reassuring thing for Richard is the feeling of going completely unnoticed: "No congratulations or reprimands; I did not exist; they abandoned me [... nobody noticed me]."

The seduction that Breckner feels for power, for belonging to a select group, is revealed in brief thoughts:

It gave one the feeling of being part of an elite unlike any other. It was said that there were only ninety-two men licensed to kill, and that meant something. I can't put into words what it meant, but when you walked down the street, you knew you were different. And when a girl looked at you like this one did now, you felt the difference.

Breckner is considered a direct and brutally honest man: he says what he thinks, thinks strategically, and eliminates what must be eliminated, including "the quackery and the straw." He's not emotional.

The ambivalence between domination and submission appears with respect to external authority and his own authority. Acting first to apologize later and feeling guilty is one of the symptoms of giving up one's authority, due to a lack of self-confidence.

Breckner is deeply affected by the encounter with the man he is commissioned to assassinate. This man is a recognized spiritual leader who understands that Richard has come to kill him. The man is not afraid of death and, with genuine authority, asks to see his

executioner. Contrary to what Breckner wants to believe about himself, the other detects fear in him. The aplomb shown by the one who is going to die, when he tells him, "Men die, Breckner," rebels and infuriates him. "That is the inescapable destiny of the human being. [...] I was not afraid at birth."

Richard Breckner seems to capture how fear has him in submission, how he places his life in the hands of a hierarchically larger entity, and thus is not free at all. On the contrary, he assumes a very great risk; he intuits it when he says: "I live on a razor's edge, and one day I will slip and cut myself."

Breckner alludes to the "fleeting feeling" that life really has meaning ("sometimes I find meaning in things, a sense of who and what I am"), a feeling that suddenly vanishes, leaving an inexplicable and unexplained void, depressing.

The very fact of not knowing "what I was trying to remember or why" manifests a disconnection with the inner being that leaves you in a kind of limbo, a place between Heaven and Earth, a promise of paradise that he intuits, also fleetingly, although he has no record of having met it. What stands out is the lack of vital roots—the kind that contribute to life making sense—and an attitude of waiting for something to happen that finally gives it meaning.

The protagonist describes the scenes in great detail, evidencing control of a world that must be watched in order to be well-prevented. All attention is focused on the cognitive, on the outside, while inside, a disconnection prevails that gives rise to some emotional confusion.

It can also be hard, even hurtful or rough without feeling anything. While there is no opportunity to live an experience fluently, the protagonist lives protected, living only in his head. He is a thinking being, evaluator, critic, accuser, and judge of the life that passes him by, of others, and also of himself—of what he does, says, or does not do or say.

His solid and impenetrable armor, made up of layers of reasoning, prevents him from being seen by anyone and protects him from the judgments of others and the damage that they could inflict on him.

This is Richard Breckner's life when he meets Patience, a woman who arouses his genuine interest and whose contact will make it easier for him to experience love. Patience Quigley is the wife of the next man Breckner is instructed to kill.

Despite his interest in her, Richard even boasts of not being sentimental, of not "falling" into the world of emotions, as something that speaks to his apparent strength, while in reality, he feels like a child in unknown territory, where his vulnerability, which he experiences as weakness, is revealed and puts him at risk.

The encounter with Patience, who says of herself that she is "damned sentimental," is a trigger for Breckner to enter the unknown. At first reactively, he demonstrates that he can get out unscathed, without being touched by sentimentality.

There's something heartbreaking about how Breckner tells Patience about his hunting down and killing another human being. He does it with an obscene transparency that shows the materialist ethic by which the end justifies the means, and with which he cynically mocks idealism. He expresses himself like this despite affirming that he sees her as a woman and that "he had not seen a woman as a woman for a long time."

Pat, after listening to him, sees his honesty and doesn't judge him, which is what Richard fears most. Before a person who recognizes you like this, you can relax, you can surrender.

It seems that something begins to give way in the protagonist when he meets love, as if he recognizes that this feeling in his heart is the place of truth, the only thing to which he can finally surrender, with faith, and rest.

His approach to love is a slow process, with an uncertain and thoughtful step, which coexists with feelings of not being worthy of love. Undoubtedly, the emotional freshness of a woman helps her to feel and express herself spontaneously, but when it is about answering questions about feelings, Richard delves back into reasoning and avoids, with a confrontational attitude, showing the intimacy of his emotion, which becomes a maze where he gets lost. "I was dead, but I was listening to his words, so a part of me must still be alive." She had said flatly that she had fallen in love with me, and I was trying to understand that. "Do you love me, Breck?" I repeated to myself until it annoyed me. "Define love for me," I said to myself. I had met many years ago a Catholic missionary in Africa who talked about loving God, and I think I called him a rude and insulting liar. Where was the object of his love? I myself was a point in the void, and then that single point had dissolved.

This character somehow lives waiting for an awakening, feeling dead in life, stopped in time, most profoundly by his fear. His strategy is to adopt the posture of force that moves him away from the emotion of fear and allows him to feel intensely alive, like a substitute life. The Sexual 6 is healed by contact with spontaneous people, in whom he can recognize and accept the inner child that he finds so difficult to find in himself. This means accepting that another way of living in the world is possible, and this without the risk of perishing. Love is a trigger for Breckner, who lands in reality and realizes who he truly is, without more shields—that is, without projecting his murderous impulses and thoughts onto the organization and his superiors.

Pat intuitively understands Breckner's difficulty in loving and feeling alive. Despite this, she is a woman in love who boldly follows her feelings and intuition. She understands that he

doesn't know what to do with his own loving feelings. He denies being in love and wants to leave his heart safe.

Breckner realizes that the experience of love is changing him and tries to analyze what is happening to him. He remains impenetrable and firmly denies his emotions.

The love experience brings out the best in Richard, who surrenders and discovers what it is to trust. Through love, he knows what authentic delivery and encounter are, and he recovers a breath of life ("in his mouth, which was suffocating and drowning").

Paradoxically, love also puts him in touch with his deepest fear. Patience tells him that he can't feel his own sensitivity, what's kind and good in him, but Breckner can't believe it. He suspects that Pat wants to manipulate him with these words, and he doubts again what he perceives through his senses.

The following dialogue with the representatives of the Department for which he works, the authority to which he has surrendered for years, evidences the cynicism that sustains the system and those who contribute to its support:

"This is what [a murderer] is, Breckner, you know, and deceit is love. The simple and terrifying beauty of the murderer is that he does not deceive himself; he is the truth, the deep and basic fact of man's existence on earth. Love is the lie, the poor, cheap, sad, corrupt lie that only brings despair and confusion. You think you've found love, Breckner. No. Oh, of course not. He has found only confusion and despair."

"So I must live with confusion and despair. Or die with them. You won't change your mind, will you?"

But Richard Breckner, after discovering love, understands that his path is to go through this confusion, to get rid of the shell that has been built to fiercely protect the vulnerability within, and to disarm himself.

For Breckner, "laying down your arms" means turning yourself in, after confessing, to save the life of the woman he loves. Faced with the awareness that he has led an existence disconnected from life, from human beings, his courageous surrender is a last gesture, with which he pays the price for his empty and meaningless life.

Now it is finished, and as I sit here with an aching feeling of emptiness, it is as if the little that was left of my own being vanished. I am very tired and am unable to think; certainly unable to draw any rational conclusion from what I have written. What I have before me simply begins at one point and ends at another point, but in that way, it is as revealing and sensitive as most of the lives of our time. I was once Richard Breckner, but when I ask myself what I am now, I get no answer. I look at myself and I only see emptiness, and by

God, I have looked at myself! It's like looking in the mirror and seeing, not your own image, but the three and a half billion faces of all humanity. And look again to find only the void.

Perhaps just a single, ephemeral thread that ties me to another human being whose name is Patience Quigley. But when you look again, that too is gone.