The Quiet American

1025 Words5 Pages
The Quiet American Vietnam has been engulfed by war for centuries, right from its very origins it has been involved in hostility. And in the 1950’s, all this conflict was building to a climax. Graham Greene’s novel, ‘The Quiet American’ is written just prior to the Vietnam War. It foreshadows the great war that was to come. One of the central themes in this historical crime novel is that things are not always what they appear to be. Whether this be in relation to the character’s personalities, such as Pyle, Fowler and Phoung, or it be about the relationships these characters hold and even the background and setting that this novel is based in. The character’s personality shifts are very evident throughout the text by how they are initially shown and how they actually behave. The three main characters who aren’t as they appear to be are Pyle, Fowler and Phoung. Pyle is portrayed as an innocent, naive, ‘quiet american’ who is not like other loud, tainted people from the USA. He is a medical officer who says he imports supplies for trachoma teams. Yet part two, suspicions arise over what involvement he has with the third force. The reader also discovers early that Pyle has been murdered which further strengthens the idea that he was not as clean as he appeared. Fowler is the main character and narrator of the story. He claims to be uninvolved and ‘dégage’ and behaves quite cynically and sarcastic. He says “I took no action-even an opinion is a kind of action...i just reported what I saw”. Though in the end, he is deeply involved in the murder of Pyle and in Vietnam in general. He has genuine feelings and emotions in the later stages of the novel, about Vietnam, Phoung and so on. Even the last lines of the novel show an example of his care and conscience, “Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could
Open Document