Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene Mind Map UGC NET English Literature

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Our Man in Havana: Character Mind Map & Summary

Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana: the key characters, the vacuum cleaner spy, a quick summary and the exam facts.

✍️ Graham Greene📅 1958🇨🇺 Havana, before the Revolution😄 Spy Comedy📜 5 Parts

The Character Mind Map

Tap any name to open the details.

Family & FriendsSpies & Police

The Hero

Jim Wormold

A quiet English vacuum-cleaner salesman in Havana who needs money for his daughter. Recruited by British intelligence, he invents agents and sends drawings of vacuum-cleaner parts as secret military weapons. His fiction becomes real when people start dying.

Ending: gets an OBE and marries Beatrice

🏠 Family & Friends

Wormold’s world

MillyWormold’s daughter

Role: Seventeen, pretty, Catholic and expensive; she wants a horse.

Dr HasselbacherAn old German doctor

Role: Wormold’s best friend; forced to help the enemy, he is killed.

Beatrice SevernA secretary from London

Role: Sent to help Wormold; she discovers his fakes and falls in love with him.

🕵️ Spies & Police

The game turns real

HawthorneA British agent

Role: Recruits Wormold and believes his reports.

Captain SeguraThe police chief

Role: Known for torture; he wants to marry Milly. Wormold beats him at draughts to take his gun.

CarterAn enemy agent

Role: Tries to poison Wormold; Wormold shoots him.

Memory Hook: Fiction Becomes Real

Greene’s comedy turns dark.

Invented agentsNames taken from a club list➜ Fiction

Vacuum cleaner “weapons”Drawings sent to London➜ Joke

Real deathsRaul, Hasselbacher, Carter➜ Danger

Key Points

What exams usually ask about.

1Draughts gameWormold plays with miniature whisky bottles to make Segura drunk

2The drawingsDrawings based on the “Atomic Pile” vacuum cleaner

3EndingTo avoid scandal, MI6 gives Wormold an OBE and a job teaching

4Greene’s experienceGreene worked for MI6 in World War II

5FilmDirected by Carol Reed (1959), screenplay by Greene

Quick Summary

The plot in five lines.

Stage 1Recruitment

Hawthorne recruits Wormold to spy in Havana.

Stage 2The Inventions

Wormold invents agents and sends drawings of vacuum-cleaner parts as weapons.

Stage 3Beatrice

London sends Beatrice and staff; an enemy group begins to act.

Stage 4Deaths

Real people are killed; Hasselbacher dies; Wormold is a target.

Stage 5Return

Wormold kills Carter, is recalled to London, honoured, and marries Beatrice.

Must-Know Exam Facts

Quick points for UGC NET, SET and PGT.

Publication

Published in 1958.

Genre

Greene called it an “entertainment“: a comic spy novel.

Satire

Mocks British intelligence and Cold War paranoia.

Setting

Havana under Batista, just before Castro’s Revolution.

Key Themes

Fiction and reality, loyalty to people versus country, and bureaucracy.

Printed Booklet

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