 First edition | |
| Author | Richard Condon |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bernard Krigstein |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill |
Publication date | April 27, 1959[1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 311 |
| OCLC | 52409655 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.O487 M36 2003 |
The Manchurian Candidate is anovel byRichard Condon, first published in 1959. It is apolitical thriller about the son of a prominent U.S.political family who isbrainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for acommunist conspiracy. The novel has twice been adapted into a feature film with the same title: the first was releasedin 1962 and the secondin 2004.
Major Ben Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are captured by an eliteSoviet commando unit during theKorean War in 1952. They are taken toManchuria, and brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Shaw is subsequently awarded theMedal of Honor.
After the war, Major Marco, now working as an intelligence officer, is transferred to New York and moves in with Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now working as a journalist. The brainwashing had convinced Marco that Raymond is a good friend and wonderful human being, but Marco knows in the back of his mind that it isn't true, that Raymond is "impossible to like." Marco has a knack for meeting women, and Raymond's apartment is suddenly filled with girls day and night. Raymond sleeps with some of the women; his captors had given him a "gift" of releasing his formerly suppressed libido. However, Raymond still pines for his true love, Jocelyn Jordan, whom he met the summer before going to Korea. Jocelyn is the daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan, a liberal opponent of Raymond's stepfather, the anti-Communist demagogue Senator Johnny Iselin. Raymond's ambitious mother Eleanor, who is the driving force behind her second husband's career, had therefore sabotaged Raymond's relationship with Jocelyn.
Some time later, Marco begins suffering a recurring nightmare in which the seated platoon members are surrounded by a group of sweet old ladies who had been a part of their brainwashing. One of the ladies tells Sergeant Shaw to murder two of his platoon comrades, which Raymond does. The backdrop with the old ladies changes back and forth between them and Chinese/Soviet intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another of the platoon's soldiers has been suffering the exact same nightmare, he starts looking into why this is happening.
Some Communist officials arrive in New York to re-activate their conditioned assassin. The trigger phrase is "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" Raymond will then play cards until he turns over the queen of diamonds, which is the trigger card bringing him to his fully conditioned state. At this point Raymond, who is known to be a crack marksman, can be commanded to perform any act and will have no memory of it later. As a test, Raymond is assigned to kill his immediate superior at the newspaper, and does so.
Marco's nightmares worsen and he is recalled to Washington and put on sick leave. On a train, he meets a more permanent love interest, Eugenie Rose Cheyney. Marco confesses the whole story to Rose, who urges him to contact the FBI. At the FBI, Marco is able to identify high Soviet and Chinese officials from his dreams. His story now believed, Marco is reinstated to active duty and put in charge of a task force to investigate the matter. Raymond accompanies his mother on a publicity-seeking tour of Europe, during which two prominent politicians are mysteriously killed. Marco's group conducts an in-depth investigation and determines with little doubt that Raymond's medal is a fraud and that the platoon was brainwashed. However, the goal of the plan remains elusive. The break comes in May 1960, when Marco is late to a meeting with Raymond at a New York bar. The loquacious bartender has told an anecdote that happens to include the phrase "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" Observing Raymond's bizarre behavior afterwards, Marco comes to realize that the solitaire game, and the queen of diamonds in particular, is Raymond's trigger. He orders packs of cards consisting entirely of the queen of diamonds.
Raymond is excitedly anticipating the return of Jocelyn Jordan, now a widow, from abroad. At a party at the Iselin's vacation home on Long Island, Raymond's mother calls him aside and asks him to play solitaire, revealing herself to be Raymond's American operator. However, Mrs. Iselin is called away briefly, during which time Jocelyn Jordan enters the room costumed as the Queen of Diamonds. The costume breaks his mother's control, and Raymond falls into Jocelyn's arms for the first time. The two depart and get married quickly, going on an ecstatic honeymoon in the Caribbean while both the Communist plotters and Marco's task force frantically search for Raymond. Upon his return, however, Raymond again encounters his mother and the solitaire deck. She gives him a new order. He must assassinate Senator Jordan, who has threatened to block Johnny Iselin's nomination to the vice-presidency at the convention next week. Raymond carries out the assassination, and also kills Jocelyn, who happens to witness the shooting, in accordance with his orders to leave no witnesses alive.
The distraught Raymond calls Ben Marco, who meets him in the Central Park with his force pack consisting only of queens of diamonds. With a full layout of queens on the table, Marco is able to penetrate to the depth of Raymond's conditioning and learns all of the details of the plot. Raymond's mother will arrange for Johnny Iselin to be named the vice-presidential nominee. On the night of the acceptance speeches, Raymond must shoot the presidential nominee dead and also shoot Iselin only to wound him. Iselin will then rise to the podium with a rousing speech that will sweep him into the White House with dictatorial powers. Eleanor has also revealed to Raymond that, after she achieves power, she plans to take revenge on the Communists for double-crossing her by sending her own son as the assassin. Marco gives Raymond new instructions, which he does not reveal to the other members of the task force.
One of the conspirators manages to separate Raymond from Marco and brings him to the convention hall where, dressed as a priest, Raymond ascends to a spotlight booth with a Soviet-made rifle. Marco's group is staking out the convention, but Marco delays pursuing Raymond until the crucial moment of the acceptance speech arrives. Instead of shooting the nominee, Raymond kills his mother and Johnny Iselin. Marco then enters the booth with a pack of cards, and a few moments later a third gunshot is heard. Raymond Shaw's unhappy life is over.[2]
The book's title refers not to the brainwashed assassin Raymond Shaw, but to Senator Johnny Iselin, who is clearly a caricature of the anti-Communist demagogue of the early 1950s, SenatorJoseph R. McCarthy. The basic premise of the story is that Iselin's achievement of nomination to national office was the direct result of a Communist plot hatched in Manchuria, and Iselin is thus the "Manchurian Candidate."
The book has twice been adapted into a feature film of the same title.The 1962 adaptation, considered a classic of the political thriller genre, was directed byJohn Frankenheimer, and starredLaurence Harvey as Shaw,Frank Sinatra as Marco, andAngela Lansbury as Eleanor in anAcademy Award-nominated performance.[3]The 2004 adaptation was directed byJonathan Demme, and starredLiev Schreiber as Shaw,Denzel Washington as Marco, andMeryl Streep as Eleanor. It was generally well received by critics, and moderately successful at the box office. The film updated the conflict and setting to thePersian Gulf War in 1991, had a U.S. corporation (called "Manchurian Global") as the perpetrator of the brainwashing and conspiracy instead of foreign Communist groups, and dropped the Johnny Iselin character in favor of making both Shaw and his mother elected politicians.
Both adaptations modify several elements of the book. The book spends more time describing the brainwashers and the facility in Manchuria where the Americans were held. The head of the project grants Shaw a "gift"; after his brainwashing, he becomes quite sexually active, in contrast to his reserved nature beforehand where he had not even kissed his love interest, Jocelyn Jordan. The novel devotes considerably more attention to the activities and backstory of Senator Iselin, making even clearer than in the 1962 movie that Iselin is a fictionalized version of SenatorJoseph R. McCarthy (the Iselin character was dropped from the 2004 film). In the novel, Mrs. Iselin and her son travel abroad, where she uses him to kill various political figures. Rosie, Marco's love interest, is the ex-fiancée of one of his associates handling the Shaw case for the FBI, making things between the couple tense. The movie adaptations also all but omit the novel's portrayal of incest between Shaw and his mother, only hinting at it with a mouth-to-mouth kiss.
As a child, Mrs. Iselin was sexually abused by her father, but fell in love with him and idolized him after his early death. Towards the end of the book, as Shaw is hypnotized by the Queen of Diamonds, he reminds her of her father and they sleep together. The 1962 version does not state outright the political affiliation of Senators Iselin and Jordan (implied to be Republicans), although in the 2004 film the equivalent characters areDemocrats. According to David Willis McCullough, Senator Iselin is modeled on Republican senatorJoseph McCarthy and, according to Condon, Shaw's mother is based on McCarthy's counselRoy Cohn.[4] The 1962 film implies that Raymond decided on his own to kill his mother and Iselin whereas the novel implies that this was the result of Marco changing Raymond's conditioning.
A stage adaptation byJohn Lahr opened in London in 1991, and has since played in the United States.[5][6][7]Kevin Puts has adapted the work into an opera. His operaThe Manchurian Candidate premiered in March 2015 at theMinnesota Opera. It has been performed by theAustin Opera and at theSeagle Festival in theAdirondacks of New York.[8][9][10]
In 1998, software developer C. J. Silverio noted that at least one three paragraph passage from the novel seemed to be adapted fromRobert Graves's 1934 novelI, Claudius. The passage in question describes Johnny Iselin's relationship with Eleanor in very similar terms to the way the marriage ofAugustus andLivia is described in Graves's novel.[11]
A copy ofThe Manchurian Candidate is a major plot point in the 1999 novelFalse Memory byDean Koontz. The novel's title is referenced in many TV shows:
In the season 4 episode "Chuck versus Phase Three" of the TV seriesChuck, the protagonist compares his experience of remembering dreams toThe Manchurian Candidate. In season 2 episode 3 ofThe Eric Andre Show, during a segment withDowntown Julie Brown, Eric Andre reveals that he programmedHannibal Buress to be his "Manchurian Candidate" before using his trigger phrase to force Hannibal into shooting a backstage crew member. In the 2016 MCU movieCaptain America: Civil War, Tony Stark nicknames Bucky Barnes, who has been turned into the brainwashed assassin known as the Winter Soldier, "Manchurian Candidate". According toNadine Dorries in 2023, former UK Prime MinisterBoris Johnson viewed then-current UK Prime MinisterRishi Sunak as being "like a Manchurian Candidate" installed byDominic Cummings.[12]
Science Fiction authorPoul Anderson took up the basic plot element ofThe Manchurian Candidate in the novelGame of Empire – one of Anderson's far-future spy thriller series, where the dashingDominic Flandry, secret agent of the star-spanning Terran Empire, confronts the agents of the rival Merseian Empire. Among other exploits, Flandry foils an audacious Merseian plot to place a Merseian agent on the Terran Imperial throne itself.
Also referenced inSlipknot's 1999 song,Wait and Bleed. The line is, "I'm a victim Manchurian Candidate."
