Insignias

Probably the two most significant images in this text are the American eagle and the swastika. They show up early and often. What's more, they show up together more often than they show up apart—which is kind of weird, since they represent opposing sides of the war.

It's also not that weird, because our protagonist is an unholy mixture of both sides of the war. Is he more of a Nazi or more of an American? No, really—it's a question that even Campbell asks about himself.

We also see the American eagle and swastika get mixed up—in another unappetizing way—by Jones. (Is anyone surprised?) Jones has his own eagle-swastika mash-up in the rings he wears, which leave his hands "glitter[ing] with rings like the hand of a Byzantine prince" (14.22). In addition to his two wedding rings, he sports:

…a diamond swastika on an onyx field presented to him in 1939 by Baron Manfred Freiherr von Killinger, then German Consul General of San Francisco, and an American eagle carved in jade and mounted in silver, a piece of Japanese craftsmanship… (14.22)

Yeah, that's not disturbing at all. What's even more unsettling is that Jones is a mirror image of Campbell. Jones has mixed up American and Nazi ideals into a nasty white supremacist mess. But Campbell is also a mixture of American and Nazi ideals, in the sense that he acts on and behaves according to both. Is Campbell's work as a spy really that different from Jones's work as a crazy hatemonger?

Uh oh.