The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Quiet American is an important novel; essentially, it is a love story but it is also a scathing critique of US meddling in the internal affairs of nations and people it knows nothing about. It marks Graham Greene as one of the greatest journalists of his generation. The novel - set in 1950s Vietnam, is carefully balanced by the weight of the authority of an author who worked as a correspondent in Vietnam between 1951-1954.
The novel is written from the point of view of a jaded British foreign correspondent and Saigon resident, Thomas Fowler and chronicles his relationship with American diplomat, Alden Pyle, who arrives in Vietnam full of the idealism of democracy, intent on teaching a foreign nation a better way of doing things; that is, the American way. By the end of the novel, we learn that Pyle's American optimism has been his undoing; but equally dangerous is Fowler's feigned journalistic distance - "I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action-even an opinion is a kind of action." Between Fowler and Pyle comes the young Vietnamese woman, Phuong. This is an emblematic, imperialistic love triangle; the struggle for the woman is meant to represent the struggle for Vietnam.
What is underscored emphatically in the novel is that the act of writing is a political one. Couched in a tale of romance and friendship, The Quiet American is a political parable, an assured explanation of history but also a warning to take heed in the future.
Submitted by Mary Ellen
