ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

Auric Gold

Inez Tapia

August 12, 2011

English 200

Essay #2 RD

Why does Auric Goldfinger exist?

            Auric Goldfinger owns gold deposits in several cities around the world and is extremely passionate in his methods of acquiring the precious commodity. Goldfinger shows the importance of gold through his appearance and the way he ascts. When Bond meets Goldfinger he says, “Bond’s first view of Mr. Goldfinger was startling. At the far corner of the roof, just below the cliff of the hotel, a man was lying on his back with his legs up on a steamer chair. He was wearing nothing but a yellow satin bikini slip, dark glasses and a pair of wide tin wings under his chin.” Goldfinger represents the average gold where money is backed and can be liberally transformed into gold. He gains independence from a system, changing, and the will to stop at nothing to increase his own value and wealth.

            Goldfinger, The richest man in England is also the treasurer for the Soviet counter-intelligence agency SMERSH. SMERSH is the brutal Soviet-led anti spy network for which Goldfinger provides financial backing. The most important theme of Gold finger is wealth; he is obsessed with gold and has hoarded away enormous quantities of it. He is gold-obsessed and because of this he plans to detonate a nuclear bomb in Ft. Knox to destabilize the United States gold market, thereby significantly increasing the net worth of his own gold billion stockpiles.

 SMERSH and its agent Goldfinger attack the wealth of nations. The smuggling and the assault on Fort Knox are meant to undermine Western economies and to bolster SMERSH’s own schemes. “The Russians were notoriously incompetent payers of their own men,” Bond notes. Goldfinger’s smuggling provides revenue for paying SMERSH’s assassins. The Financial backing can be converted into gold where a certain amount of money is diffused. There is a certain quantity of gold so it makes it hard when there are so many people. The gold is only for people that can obtain it and take care of it.

            This is a system where there is control of the amount of money distribution because it is limited to the quantity of gold set aside. Setting gold aside is a good thing because then prices will be regulated which moderates the chance of prices to rise. The weakness of goldfinger is that there is only a restricted supply of gold therefore it becomes difficult to keep a gold average when the the community is growing tremondously.

            In Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments he gives us the impression that to be wealthy is a good thing because the high class has money. Smith say’s “The fortunate and the proud wonder at the insolence of human wretchedness, that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the loathsome aspect of its misery presume to disturb the serenity of their happiness.” In this case the lower class such as the “poor” is inappreciable and looked down upon.  As for the high class or “wealthy” they are presented to be unique because they are rich so therefore acknowledged and glorified. Due to this idea, in this text everyone wants to be prosperous.