historical facts
common during the Cold War was defection which made Communism infamous and
Tom Clancy famous for the believable plot developed.
Similarly in TCTK Clancy also uses historical facts to enhance his
plot making it believable. Using a historical fact, Clancy shows how cruel
the Communist system is with no respect for the humans but only for
political power. The landing of a German teenager, Mathias Rust, inside
the Red Square and his prosecution is brilliantly used to illustrate the
KGB's way of thinking (pp. 226-7, TCTK). In June 1987 a German teenager
landed in the Red Square in Soviet Union. He somehow managed to bypass
sophisticated air defence systems and causing several bureaucrats to be
fired by the Soviet Politburo (p. 24, "Destination Red Square"). The
historical fact gave Tom Clancy the ground to make the Communist
bureaucrats' characters more sensitive to treason for the fear of losing
their position and therefore their power. Tom Clancy exploits the fear of
the Communists to make them harder to infiltrate. The difficulty
infiltrating the Soviet government is precisely what the author wanted and
makes his plot more interesting by making it more complex.
The historical facts are not the only way in which believable plot is
introduced. The use of realistic characters allows the reader to believe
in whatever outcome realism will cause. In THRO the astonishment which
Ramius feels through his thoughts being revealed by the author are all
realistic. They sound like an average person's reactions to a situation.
"They know our name, Ramius was thinking, they know our name! How can
this be? They knew where to find us--exactly! How? What can the
Americans have? How long has the Los Angeles been trailing us?
Decide--you must decide!" (pg. 248, THRO)
Ramius wants to defect from Soviet Union and on one of his missions he
disobeys o...