Crime vs. Punishment Theme Analysis

Despite its surreal, fantastical elements, The City and the City is primarily a detective novel that explores the distinctions between different types of crime and their corresponding punishments. The novel’s narrator and hero, Tyador Borlú, is a detective with the Besźel Extreme Crimes Unit, and he is devoted to the pursuit of justice. Yet Borlú’s strong principles end up clashing with the legal norms of the world in which he lives, which end up obstructing his investigation of the murder of Mahalia Geary. Indeed, the novel makes a distinction between moral violations (such as murder) and illegal acts that don’t harm anyone (such as breach). The fact that the laws governing the divide between Besźel and Ul Qoma are treated with more seriousness than the laws around moral violations indicates that the legal system of the two cities is seriously corrupt. Despite the fact that he is himself a police officer, Borlú learns that breaking certain laws can actually be a necessary part of the pursuit of justice.

The opening of the novel, which is conventionally faithful to the genre of detective fiction, establishes a deceptively simple account of morality, crime, and punishment—an account that unravels over the course of the novel. When Borlú and his team investigate the scene of the murder of a young woman (later revealed to be Mahalia Geary), they assume that the crime is relatively straightforward. Because of Mahalia’s age and the seedy area in which her body is found, Borlú guesses that she might be a sex worker who was killed by a john or a pimp. This is the kind of crime that Borlú encounters regularly, and he therefore feels confident that he will know how to solve it. It is also straightforward in a moral sense; the murder is clearly both a legal and a moral violation, and Borlú’s job would simply be to find the perpetrator in order to make them face an appropriate punishment. 

However, as the narrative goes on, the law surrounding the divide between Besźel and Ul Qoma becomes a more and more prominent aspect of the case, and this prohibits Borlú from being able to carry out his investigation. He comes to realize that Mahalia had some involvement with dissident unificationists and nationalists, but he has trouble investigating these connections because these groups are so paranoid about the “wrathful” surveillance of Breach: “That terrible presence [Breach] might appear and disappear a unificationist for even a somatic breach, a startled jump at a misfiring Ul Qoma car.” The fact that Breach persecutes dissidents for instinctive bodily reactions shows that its authority is excessive, punishing those who have not even chosen to do anything wrong. Furthermore, the fact that this excessive punishment obstructs Borlú’s investigation shows that Breach’s disproportionate power can actually stop those who have committed serious moral violations (like murder) from being brought to justice.

The idea that the excessive focus on breach above other forms of crime actually exacerbates moral violations is further emphasized by Borlú’s description of how the border between the cities enables petty crime to take place. Borlú recalls that when he was growing up, he was told to ignore Ul Qoman pickpockets and muggers because “breach is a worse transgression than theirs.” The fact that breach is elevated as a crime worse than any other effectively leaves citizens defenseless against criminals from the other city. Borlú himself becomes a victim of this dynamic when he shoots the man (Yorjavic) who kills Mahalia’s best friend Yolanda Rodriguez, thereby inadvertently committing breach because Yorjavic is in Besźel, and Borlú himself is in Ul Qoma. The fact that Borlú is a police officer who apprehended a murderer doesn’t exonerate him, and he ends up being punished for breaching, which further obstructs his ability to solve the crime of Mahalia’s murder. When he tries to argue with the anonymous Breach officers and make them understand that he only breached in order to stop a murderer, they simply reply, “He never breached. You did.”

The focus on Breach is also shown to obstruct justice due to the fact that many believe that people who violate social and political norms (including the sovereignty of the two cities) deserve any bad things that happen to them. Borlú realizes this while he is investigating Mahalia’s murder and encounters more and more people who believe that, due to her obsession with the mythical third city, Orciny, Mahalia brought her fate upon herself. Borlú must struggle to push past this widely held view in order to bring Mahalia’s killer to justice. This struggle conveys how people can be treated as disposable because they violate norms and laws on political grounds, even if they don’t actually harm anyone in doing so.

Breach also illustrates the unjust and illogical nature of the law because, unlike laws preventing theft or murder, it doesn’t have a clear purpose but seems to exist largely for its own sake. Indeed, the only point of Breach is to keep the cities separate. The uncertainty over why Breach exists, how it is so powerful, and why it is so strictly enforced emerges through the fact that Breach is the name for the crime, the punishment, and the authority charged with policing the crime. When people commit breach (the crime), Breach (the authority) takes them into the Breach (the punishment), an ambiguous zone described as a “void full of angry police.” All this serves to indicate that breach is a self-justifying crime, and one that exists purely in order to punish people for committing it. In this sense, Breach exists only to maintain a certain level of control over the population and to enhance the authority of those charged with policing it. This is clearly a contrast to the kind of crime and punishment that Borlú addresses, as his determination to solve the murder of Mahalia Geary demonstrates that he is committed to a more logical and functional perspective on law and order.