Mr Big

This post contains an AI images of Mr Big as described by Ian Fleming in the novel Live and Let Die.

In Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming describes Mr. Big through various details about his appearance, background, activities, and the perceptions of others who know or encounter him:

Physical Description:

• He is described as having huge height and bulk, standing six and a half feet tall and weighing twenty stone, with little of it being fat.
• He is 45 years old.
• His head is huge, described as a “great football,” twice the normal size and nearly round.
• His skin is grey-black, taut, and shining “like the face of a week-old corpse in the river”. Bond notes that a chronic heart disease in recent years has imparted a greyish tinge to his skin.
• He is hairless except for some grey-brown fluff above the ears; he has no eyebrows or eyelashes.
• His eyes are described as extraordinarily far apart, making it difficult to focus on both at once. Their gaze is steady and golden.
• There are few wrinkles or creases on his face, but two deep clefts above the nose, described as “clefts of concentration”. His forehead bulges slightly.
• Despite the “monstrous head,” it is described as not being disproportionate, carried on a wide, short neck supported by giant shoulders.
• Overall, his appearance creates an impression that is “awe-inspiring, even terrifying”. Bond perceives him as a “ghastly misfit” who might be bent on revenge.
• Bond later refers to his head as the “great grey football of a head”. He has a wide rubbery mouth with flat, slightly everted lips drawn back from big white teeth.

Background and Identity:

• He was born in Haiti and is half negro and half French.
• Due to the initial letters of his real name, Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, and his size, he was called ‘Big Boy’ or ‘Big’ as a youth, which later became ‘The Big Man’ or ‘Mr Big’. His real names only linger on a parish register in Haiti and his FBI dossier.
• He was initiated into Voodoo as a child.
• He worked as a truck-driver in Port au Prince, then emigrated to America.
• In America, he worked for a hi-jacking team in the Legs Diamond gang.
• After Prohibition, he moved to Harlem and bought into a nightclub and a string of call-girls, with his partner ending up dead in cement in 1938.
• He fought in France and was decorated by the Americans and the French.
• He disappeared for five years, believed to have gone to Moscow.
• He returned to Harlem in 1950 and came to the notice of the FBI as a suspected Soviet agent.
• He never incriminated himself or fell into FBI traps.

Criminal Activities and Power:

• He is probably the most powerful negro criminal in the world.
• He bought up nightclubs and a chain of Harlem brothels and seemed to have unlimited funds.
• He paid his lieutenants a flat rate of twenty thousand dollars a year.
• He was absolutely ruthless to anyone who argued or disobeyed his orders.
• He is described as a “real, hard weapon of fear and death”.
• He is linked to gold coins circulating in America, which the American Treasury sought British assistance to trace.
• M states they suspect and are certain that Jamaican treasure is being used to finance the Soviet espionage system in America.
• Mr. Big owns a Diesel yacht, the Secatur, which runs from a small island on the North Coast of Jamaica through the Florida Keys to St Petersburg. This yacht is used to transport cargo, including shells and tropical fish, doing “big business” with a Greek sponge-fisher’s company.
• His operations are described as effective, technically brilliant, and “almost foolproof”.
• He has a communications centre and controls a team of spies called “The Eyes”.
• He has the ability to make negro people do “absolutely anything he likes”.
• Bond reflects that Mr. Big seems to have the run of America, able to push a democracy around.

Affiliations and Beliefs:

• He is the head of the Black Widow Voodoo cult.
• He is believed by his cult to be the Baron Samedi himself, the spirit of darkness and death.
• He encourages the idea that he is Baron Samedi’s Zombie by having the Baron’s fetish at his elbow. Bond saw the effigy of Baron Samedi in his room.
• He is a Soviet agent.
• He is a known member of SMERSH.
• He finds Voodooism a powerful weapon on minds susceptible to superstition.

Personality and Methods:

• He has no known vices except women. He does not drink or smoke.
• He is described as having an intellect that seems to radiate from him.
• His English is almost pedantically accurate, without slang, and his voice is soft, even, and without expression.
• He is dedicated to achieving high standards of subtlety and technical polish in his operations, seeing them as “work[s] of art” bearing his signature. He is content to be his only judge but believes his work will win recognition.
• He accepts anonymity partly because he admires the self-negation of the anonymous artist, comparing himself to Egyptian fresco painters.
• He is described as a “raving megalomaniac” by Bond, and considered a “menace,” not just a gangster, due to his dedicated mind.
• He suffers from “accidie,” or deadly lethargy caused by boredom.
• He uses calculated cruelty and intimidation, such as breaking Bond’s finger and threatening Solitaire.
• He employs telepathy as an “inquisitor” because “torture is messy and inconclusive”. Solitaire has the ability to divine the truth in people.
• He possesses psychic power.
• He is described as having a “mania for exactitude and efficiency”.
• He is imaginative and technically brilliant.
• He refers to himself as the “first of the great negro criminals”.
• He attributes his success to modern techniques and an “infinite capacity for taking pains,” which he describes as “artistic, subtle pains”.
• He views himself as a “well-equipped wolf” against “countless millions of sheep”.
• He invents cruel methods of execution, such as a variation of “keel-hauling” using a paravane and sharks.
• He can appear polite but faintly bored, even in unusual circumstances.
• He shows a hint of vanity in the diamonds he wears.
• Bond perceives him as an “elemental, a malignant spectre”, but also reminds himself he is just a mortal man with a diseased heart.

These descriptions paint a picture of Mr. Big as a physically imposing, intellectually formidable, and ruthlessly efficient criminal mastermind deeply connected to both the Voodoo cult and the Soviet espionage machine, operating with a unique, artistic approach to his crimes.