The Quiet American- Graham Greene (1955)

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Graham Greene’s classic 1955 novel builds a softly romanticised world in the distant outpost of the ‘Paris of the East’, old Saigon, the administrative centre of a French colony on its knees in the midst of war. Here, American and European correspondents drink Vermouth Cassis in the bar of the Hotel Continental and discuss the fighting that is taking place up north. Thomas Fowler is not like them. He is a reporter, not a correspondent, insistent on remaining degagé from the politics of a war that is not his own. Aged and cynical, he is merely content to be far from rainy England and his estranged wife. Fowler finds peace in this Indochina, fractured by war and close to the comforting reality of death, softened by the haze of opium and the warm arms of beautiful Phuong.

Into this stasis stumbles Fowler’s antithesis, Alden Pyle, a young American sent to Vietnam for the first time to work for the aid mission, with a head full of rhetoric from the books he read at Harvard. Pyle is the quiet American, described as such by Fowler to distinguish him from the brassy show-offs of the press club, a name which later gains a dark significance as Pyle’s well-meaning but misguided ideas embroil him in bloodshed. Fowler reluctantly comes to learn that in war, “sooner or later, one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.”

The Quiet American is a sinister testament to the danger of naivety and idealism in the setting of the French war against the Vietminh. It serves also as a harsh criticism of war and of American foreign policy in the Cold War period, which remains relevant today. Besides, it is an exploration of morality and the darkness of human spirit. The story is well-built and compelling, crossing between conflicting scenes of war in the north and of comfort in the south, steadily unfolding into its gripping conclusion. The attitude of the narrator, a reflection of that of Hertfordshire-born Greene, is typically British; cynical and loaded with sarcastic comments, which bounce straight off the oblivious American characters.

The portrayal of Americans in the story has made it a controversial book; it is certainly a daring, powerful and sobering piece of work, both in its depiction of the big-headed, ignorant American correspondents and in its criticisms of the perceived American ‘role’ in Indochina. The destruction of war as seen by Fowler is described in frank detail, probably based on scenes witnessed by Greene himself during his years in Vietnam. Greene shows contempt for the ignorance to Vietnamese traditions and the sense of moral right and duty that underpinned American presence in Vietnam. Greene’s anti-Americanism and particularly the publication of this novel contributed to him being under constant surveillance by the US intelligence agencies from the 1950s until his death.

Greene uses his characters as metaphors for his interpretation of the political situation in Vietnam. The third character and main Vietnamese character of the story, Phuong, is barely developed and the reader knows little about her; the two male protagonists seem to know little more. Fowler and Pyle create their own interpretations of what she wants and needs in order to compete with one another for her affections, but the narrator recognises that even he was creating a false image and he neither knew of nor cared very much about her personal interests. With her purposefully distant character, Phuong stands for the ancient and indifferent Vietnam, the timeless rice-paddies and water-buffalo, the men and women in conical hats who continue with their daily work, enigmatic to the power struggles gripping their country by those who hold their own imperialist interests to heart.

This is a story without clear-cut heroes and villains. The naïve Pyle is well-meaning in his intentions but unable to differentiate between a written theory and a reality, and cannot see the blood when it is on his own hands, or in this case, his shoes. Greene terms this ‘innocence’ and offers his own interpretation of innocence, that it is a dangerous condition comparable to “a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm”. Conversely, seasoned, cynical Fowler does not pretend to know the solution to the turmoil in the divided country. He stands aside as an observer and justifiably or not, favour swings his way.

As in many of Greene’s work, feelings of desperation, loss and betrayal feature. Greene was bullied to the point of attempted suicide during his school years and later suffered from bipolar disorder. In the Quiet American, this is portrayed through the existential dilemma of Fowler, who, in the closing decades of his life, seeks to remain unattached both in his work and in his relationships. Inside, however, he is troubled by reminders of the inevitable pain he has caused to other people along the way- the watch-tower guard killed because of his presence the night his car broke down on the way back to Saigon, the pain of his off-stage wife Helen that cuts through her letters. It is also in his fear of old age and loneliness, of returning to England, that make him accept a comfortable relationship with Phuong without love or honesty. Then there is the personal crisis that ensues when she leaves him for someone who can offer more. Similarly, justice and morality are toyed with. Greene became interested in Catholicism and converted in his early twenties, an influence that shaped the nature of his work. In this novel the protagonist is faced with the responsibility of taking an ultimate decision. The question of whether his judgement was justified is left open-ended, and for the reader, there is no simple answer. This builds the sinister and pessimistic tone that characterises the novel.

For my project, primarily focused on studying the culture and history of the Indochinese countries, the Quiet American is not an obvious choice of reading. There is little to be learned of the events of the first Vietnam War from this work of fiction, nor is there much to be learned about 1950s Vietnamese culture, besides brief descriptive passages about street vendors and fortune tellers in the streets of Saigon. Greene’s narrator Fowler recognises that he is unable to identify with the Vietnamese people he sees, and who see him, every day. The old women who crouch along his corridor each night gossiping see all his comings and goings, all his visitors, but he cannot understand what they say about him. He is part of another world, that of foreign correspondents and colonial-era hotels. This is a conscious element of the story: that so many foreign policy-makers and correspondents will comment on the Vietnamese situation without due understanding of the national culture, history and politics, the mistake sorely made by the US government some ten years later in thinking it would be an easy battle to defeat communist guerilla fighters. Greene’s cynicism turned out to be justified.

But the reputation of this book alone, perhaps the most significant commentary on the Vietnam War ever written, makes it a necessary read for me, the beginning of an understanding of the legacy of the war in the eyes of the international community, if not to the Vietnamese themselves. Graham Greene spent much time in Vietnam between 1951 and 1954, but there is much less of a focus on romantic nostalgia of that place and time than there is in, say, Jon Swain’s writing of Indochina at a similar period in his 1998 memoir, River of Time. Greene’s works of fiction are based in several settings not exclusive to Indochina, but are mostly other exotic, poverty-stricken countries steeped in colonial history such as Cuba, Mexico and Haiti, from where he can launch his anti-American attacks.

Despite not having immediate relevance to my project, I found this novel to be a very absorbing read. Fowler is a convincing character; it was possible to sympathise with his fears and loneliness despite his cynical, world-weary outlook and altogether unpleasant personality. From studying the Vietnam Wars, I also share Greene’s repulsion of American involvement in Vietnam and found this challenging message of the novel really compelling. As in any great novel, the conclusion was thought-provoking and immaculately executed.