If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

Hellman's papers are held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Hellman denied that the character was based on Gardiner. Endorsing this view the editors of the New Republic wrote that "there are more important questions than Trotsky's guilt".