Michael Osei-Antwi

Professor Scanlan 

English

December 13 2022

American Spy 

 In this novel “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson  is about an intelligent woman, Marie Mitchell, who was assigned to a task force to get information about Thomas Sankara. Throughout the book, characters must consistently make decisions that will affect their own, as well as other peoples’ lives. Ethics is a major factor in how these decisions are made. The five types of ethics are: deontology, virtue, utilitarian, feminist, and global. In this essay, I will analyze how Marie,Ross ,Sankara and Slater used these different types of ethics and use research to support these analyses. Next, I will explain what motivated Marie to take the task assignment. Lastly, I will talk about what ethics Marie and Ross started with and ended with.

I.               Feminist ethics

a. Marie does not want to seduce

                                               i. “I think we could get you closer to him than we could get a man,” Ross pressed.

                                             ii. “They expected me to sleep with him. For intel” (pg 87)

1. For the right price, they expected Marie to agree even if doing so would disagree with her own personal moral instinct and values.

b. Sankara is in support of women’s rights movement

                                               i. “Sankara argued that a society that oppressed women couldn’t be a successful one, and committed himself to women’s rights” (pg 87)

II.             Deontological ethics

a. Ed discusses personal sacrifices he has made on the job to fulfill his duty

                                               i. “That’s a choice I made. A personal sacrifice. It was worth it, because I swore an oath of service to all Americans.” (pg 86)

III.           Utilitarian ethics

a. Ross developing the assignment to hire Marie to kill and cut the operation of Sankara

                                               i. “It’s a fact that Communist governments inhibit the economic growth of a country. End of story.” (pg 88)

                                             ii. Gold suspends Marie

IV.           Virtue ethics

a. Marie accepts the assignment to achieve her own goal and finding out more information about her sister’s death

                                               i. “I want to talk to Daniel Slater.” I had questions about Helene that only he could answer. (pg 88)

b. Marie ignores her assignment and does not kill Sankara

V.             Global ethics

a. Sankara has a global and large impact in his political initiatives

                                               i. “Sankara had helped save the lives of thousands of children.” (pg 86)

b. Slater talks about why he joined the CIA in the first place, to make a positive impact on humanity through tactics used in war, in this case the Cold War (pg 173)

                                               i. “humanity had been brought to the brink of nuclear war. But Slater believed that had he been able to insert himself into the early planning stages of something that became an international conflict, that conflict would have been avoided.”