The Quiet American
| File:TheQuiteAmericannovelpic.jpg | |
| Author | Graham Greene |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Brian Cronin |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War novel |
| Publisher | William Heinemann London |
Publication date | December 1955 |
| Publication place | England |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 180 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-09-947839-0 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
The Quiet American (1955) is a novel by British author Graham Greene. It has been adapted into films in 1958 and 2002.
Background
The Quiet American is one of Greene's later books, written in 1955, and draws on his experiences as an SIS agent spying for England in World War II in Sierra Leone in the early 1940s and on winters spent from 1951 to 1954 in Saigon reporting on the French colonial war for The Sunday Times and Le Figaro. He was apparently inspired to write The Quiet American in October 1951 while driving back to Saigon from the Bentre province. He was accompanied by an American aid worker who lectured him about finding a “third force in Vietnam”. He spent three years writing it.
Structure
It is, in many ways, a frame story, with the narrator (Fowler) beginning close to the end with Pyle's death, and then gradually revealing the succession of events that led to his death. The novel constantly shifts between the two time periods: the present, the reality that exists after Pyle's death; and the past, the events that led to it. The book is set largely in the past. It is divided into four parts, each with separate (and separately numbered) chapters, and each part ending at a pivotal moment. The latter two parts end with a crucial scene from the past, and then the first scene of the next part is set in the present, after Pyle is dead.
Plot summary
Set in the early 1950s in Saigon, Vietnam during the end of the First Indochina War, on one level The Quiet American is a love story about the triangle that develops between a British journalist in his fifties, a young American idealist and a beautiful Vietnamese girl, but on another level it is also about the political turmoil and growing American involvement that led to the Vietnam War. Fowler, who narrates the story, is involved in the war only as an observer, apart from one crucial instant. Pyle, whom Greene uses to represent America and its policies in Vietnam, is a CIA operative sent to steer the war according to America’s interests, and is passionately devoted to the ideas of York Harding, an American foreign policy theorist who said that what Vietnam needed was a “third player” to take the place of both the colonialists and the Vietnamese rebels and restore order. This third player was plainly meant to be America, and so Pyle sets about creating a “Third Force” against the Viet Minh by using a Vietnamese splinter group headed by corrupt militia leader General Thé (based on Trinh Minh The). His armament of them with American weaponry leads to a series of terrorist bombings in Saigon which (blamed on the Communists) kill innocent people, including women and children. Meanwhile, Pyle has stolen Fowler’s Vietnamese mistress Phuong, promising her marriage and security, and when Fowler finds out about his involvement in the bombings he takes action to seal all their fates.
Major Characters
Thomas Fowler, the narrator and main character, is a veteran British journalist in his fifties, who has been covering the war in Vietnam for over two years. He is married but separated from his wife, who lives in England. He carries on a relationship with a young Vietnamese girl whom he intends to marry, but his wife will not divorce him due to her religious views. Cynical and deliberately “uninvolved”, the only thing he still cares about is his lover Phuong, and when his possession of her is threatened he is caught between conscience, love, and country.
Alden Pyle, the deceptively “quiet American” of the title, is an idealistic, naïve young American who arrives in Vietnam with his head full of ideas from authors such as York Harding, who advocates a so-called “Third Force” as the answer to the war in Vietnam. He is constantly criticized by Fowler because of his willingness to live by every word in Harding's books, especially The Role of the West. A bright Harvard graduate, he comes to Vietnam with the U.S. Economic Aid Mission, and has not experienced war first-hand. He was raised to stick to his morals and to show respect and manners, especially to women. He falls in loves with Phuong, and offers her a better life than the one he believes she has. His very innocence and youth, however, are dangerous, and lead not only to Fowler losing Phuong, but to a deeper tragedy. His personality is a direct foil to that of Fowler's.
Phuong, Fowler’s lover at the beginning of the novel, is a beautiful young Vietnamese girl who stays with him for security and protection, and leaves him for the same reason. She is viewed by Fowler as a companion to be taken for granted and by Pyle as a delicate flower to be protected, but Greene never makes clear which, if either, of these views is actually the truth. Pyle's desire for Phuong was largely interpreted by critics to parallel his desire for a non-communist south Vietnam. Her character is never fully developed or revealed. She is never able to show her emotions, as her older sister makes decisions for her. She is named after but not based on a Vietnamese friend of Greene’s.
Vigot, a French inspector at the Surete, investigates Pyle's death. He is a man torn between doing his duty (pursuing Pyle's death and questioning Fowler) and doing what is best for the country (letting the matter go). He and Fowler are oddly akin in some ways, both faintly cynical and weary of the world; hence their discussion of Blaise Pascal. But they are divided by the differences in their faith: Vigot is a Roman Catholic and Fowler an atheist.
Literary significance and reception
After its publication in the U.S. in 1956, the novel was widely condemned as anti-American. It was criticized by The New Yorker for portraying Americans as murderers, largely based on one scene in which a bomb explodes in a crowd of people. According to critic Philip Stratford, quoted in "The Quiet American" by Joe Nordgren, “American readers were incensed, perhaps not so much because of the biased portrait of obtuse and destructive American innocence and idealism in Alden Pyle, but because in this case it was drawn with such acid pleasure by a middle-class English snob like Thomas Fowler whom they were all too ready to identify with Greene himself”. However, it was popular in England and over the years has achieved an even greater status, being adapted into films in 1958 and most recently in 2002 by Miramax, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser and earning the former a Best Actor nomination. In recent years there have been frequent parallels drawn between Greene's condemnation of what he saw as America's ignorant, high-handed involvement in Vietnam and the course of the war in Iraq.
Allusions and references
Blaise Pascal's Pensees, specifically "The Wager" - “Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is, let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”
Fowler claims that he is not a Berkeleian, a reference to the ideas of George Berkeley.
Fowler quotes part of Arthur Hugh Clough's Spectator Ab Extra to Pyle, and Clough's Amours de Voyage is included in the preface.
Allusions to history, geography and current science
This novel is set during the First Indochina War and lists cities such as Saigon, Haiphong, and Hanoi. Though fiction, it mentions and involves actual people and groups, such as the Vietminh and Trinh Minh The.
Publication history
This novel was first published in Great Britain in 1955 by William Heinemann Ltd. It was first published in the United States in 1956 by the Viking Press, Inc. The ISBN of the American edition is 0-09-947839-0.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
- The Quiet American (1958)
- The Quiet American (2002)
- ABC Australia documentary Graham Greene: "The Quiet American"
External links
- Amazon book on The Quiet American
- This book was quoted by President Bush in a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/08/bushs_quiet_american_reference.html
Sources, references, quotations
