The Stainless Steel Rat · Chapter
XVIII explained
Jim diGriz reveals his true identity to Angelina, who has known all along.
What happens
Jim diGriz reveals his true identity to Angelina, who has known all along. They confront their mutual attraction and moral differences, while Jim deduces that Count Cassitor ordered the assassination attempt on Angelina. The Count, paranoid and suspicious, uses a snooper-detector to ensure privacy and pressures Jim about Angelina's dangerous presence.
Themes in this chapter
Crime and Identity
Jim reveals his true identity as Slippery Jim diGriz to Angelina, who has known all along; both characters grapple with their criminal pasts and present personas.
Morality and Amorality
Jim and Angelina debate the significance of killing and death; Angelina dismisses moral concerns as trivial, while Jim struggles to articulate his own ethical stance.
Loneliness and Ego
Jim feels isolated in his moral conflict; Angelina's powerful influence overwhelms his remaining compassion, highlighting their mutual loneliness and self-centeredness.
Characters to notice
- Slippery Jim diGriz
Reveals his true identity to Angelina; struggles with his feelings for her and his moral compass; deduces the Count's involvement in the assassination attempt.
- Angelina
Known Jim's true identity for a while; confronts him about his past and their similarities; receives a threatening phone call and momentarily points a gun at Jim.
- Count Cassitor
Shocked by the assassin's body; uses a snooper-detector to ensure privacy; expresses concern about Angelina's role in the rebellion.
- Grav Bent Diebstall
Jim's alias; the Count addresses him as Grav Diebstall and discusses the revolution.
Key passages
“We’ve both made mistakes in the past and it has taken us a dreadfully long time to find out that we are just alike.”
Angelina tells Jim that they are fundamentally the same, having both made errors and now recognizing their similarity.
Angelina asserts their shared nature, challenging Jim's self-perception.
“Don’t you realize how completely trivial it is? Two hundred years from now you, I and every person now living in the galaxy will be dead. What does it matter if a few of them are helped along and reach their destination a bit quicker?”
Angelina argues that death is insignificant in the grand scale of time, justifying killing as merely hastening the inevitable.
Angelina's amoral philosophy clashes with Jim's lingering moral qualms.
“I think you have underestimated the desperation of that rat upstairs. When you dropped him with that bottle yesterday, you pushed him just as far as he could be pushed.”
Jim explains that Count Cassitor, humiliated by Angelina, likely ordered the assassination attempt out of desperation.
Jim deduces the Count's motive for the attack on Angelina.