According to Benson the main theme of Diamonds Are Forever is expressed in the title, with the permanency of the gemstones held in contrast to other aspects of the story, particularly love and life. Towards the end of the novel Fleming uses the lines "Death is forever. But so are diamonds", and Benson sees the gems as a metaphor for death and Bond as the "messenger of death".
The journalist and author Christopher Hitchens observes that "the central paradox of the classic Bond stories is that, although superficially devoted to the Anglo-American war against communism, they are full of contempt and resentment for America and Americans"; Benson sees that Diamonds Are Forever contains examples of Fleming's feelings of superiority towards American culture, including his description of the sleaziness of Las Vegas. Amis, in his exploration of Bond in The James Bond Dossier , pointed out that Leiter is
... such a nonentity as a piece of characterization ... he, the American, takes orders from Bond, the Britisher, and that Bond is constantly doing better than he, showing himself, not braver or more devoted, but smarter, wittier, tougher, more resourceful, the incarnation of little old England.
The cultural historian Jeremy Black points to the theme of international travel in Diamonds Are Forever , which was still a novelty to most people in Britain at the time. This travel between a number of a locations exacerbates one of the problems identified by Black: that there was no centre to the story. In contrast to the other novels in the Bond canon, where Casino Royale had Royale, From Russia, with Love had Istanbul and Dr. No had Jamaica, Diamonds Are Forever had multiple locations and two villains and there was "no megalomaniac fervour, no weird self-obsession, at the dark centre of the plot".
According to Fleming's biographer, Andrew Lycett, after the novel was completed, Fleming added four extra chapters "almost as an afterthought", detailing the events on the Queen Elizabeth . This introduced the question of marriage, and allowed Fleming to discuss matrimony through his characters, with Bond telling Case "Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other." Lycett opines that the addition was because of the state of Fleming's own marriage which was going through a bad time.
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