The Quiet American

1313 Words6 Pages
The Quiet American acts as an anti-war novel set in the 1952 by Graham Greene. Greene illustrates upon his experiences of the Vietnam War in Indochina as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro. U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War during this period was an effort to prevent a triumph of Vietnamese victory against the French and what became known as the ‘domino theory’. Green argues that America is a money-oriented, greedy and "innocent" nation with no understanding of other peoples desires. He states that America should leave Asia to its own devices as intervention in their affairs only causes other countries suffering. Furthermore his novel accuses America as being ignorant interferers in the violence in Vietnam. The book is important…show more content…
He works in the Economic Aid Mission and acts as a strong supporter in the American foreign policy. He is blind-sighted by his ‘mission’ and is ‘innocent’. He is ignorant as a result of his Harvard education and reliance on academic books, such as York Harding's writing, to understand the war. Within the novel Pyle promotes the introduction of a ‘third force’, an anti-communist political movement that is also anti-colonial. This is characterised by the context of the 1950s as military strategists feared the Korean war would quickly widen into another world war with the intervention of the Chinese or Soviet Union. Some U.S. officials were taking this position of a ‘third force’ to prevent this. Pyle takes this notion to the extreme by involving himself in the development of explosives; however the bomb is detonated in a market place, killing innocent citizens. Pyle believes that the death of Vietnamese civilians is necessary in the path of "democracy". His emotionally unattached state after the explosion suggests he is innocent of his own actions. “They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved.” (p23) Pyle’s character shows the polar opposite to Fowler as he dedicates himself to American involvement, significant in emphasising the different views across…show more content…
Colonialism and its role in the war is a frequent point of contention between Pyle and Fowler. Fowler argued that “he was as incapable of imagining a pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he might cause others” (53). He has a vision for the country that does not take into account the opinions of the Vietnamese people, whom he considers to be "childlike." Pyle only sees the world through York Harding's ideas and theories. Furthermore this means of acquiring knowledge is frequently a point of tension between Fowler and Pyle. Fowler prefers specificity over generalized situations and draws conclusions based on individual instances. Pyle, on the other hand, prefers to gather knowledge from scholarly sources. Even though Fowler is open to learning, it takes an extremely emotional event for him to finally let go of his professed neutrality and take a stance in the war. Pyle, however, never even considers changing his mind - which is ultimately part of his undoing. Pyle in intriguing with the dissident General Tho he is moving effectively to create a "Third Force" against both the French Colonials and the Communists. Fowler sees the Third Force as a merely political abstraction Pyle got out of books. "He never saw anything he hadn't heard in a lecture hall, and his writers and lecturers made a fool of
Open Document