Literature and Integrity Theme Analysis

Betrayal takes place against the backdrop of the publishing world of 1970s London. Jerry is a successful literary agent, and his old friend Robert is a successful publisher. Their careers seem to follow naturally from their undergraduate activities in literary magazines, a period that Robert alludes to as one of fervent artistic idealism for them both. Yet the very nature of their work—to make money off (other people’s) books, as distinct from the non-commercial endeavors that defined their college years—requires them to compromise on the artistic commitments that brought them, and other people in their field, to the work in the first place. The writer Casey, for instance, whom Jerry represents and Robert publishes, has given up on his artistic merit but still makes them money, so they keep him on. This kind of compromise darkens the cloud of guilt that hangs over these characters. The poor and eccentric Spinks, on the other hand, represents the classic figure of the struggling writer who embodies the integrity Jerry and Robert have lost.

For Robert, great literature of the past remains his deepest consolation: the morning after he learns of Emma’s affair, he goes to a small island outside Venice to read his favorite writer back in college, Yeats (a poet famous for his romantic humiliations). Far from spiraling into self-pity, Robert later claims that in this moment he was genuinely happy, “such a rare thing.” Jerry, meanwhile, turns to Yeats as well when he learns that Robert knows about his affair, and he plans a family vacation to the Lake District, where the English Romantic movement was born. For both Robert and Jerry, canonical literature still retains its inherent pleasure, but it also now serves to recall the ideals and artistic standards they betrayed in pursuit of commercial success. Ironically, they can only feel in contact with great literature during lavish vacations paid for by their artistically compromised careers. Through the main characters’ decline in artistic integrity, then, Betrayal highlights what it sees as a deep irony at the heart of the publishing industry: in order to achieve the level of commercial success necessary to devote oneself to reading great literature, one must compromise on the artistic commitments that attracted them to these works of literature in the first place.