The Quiet American
Greene intertwines two mirror image triangular relationships in early 1950’s Viet Nam. The fictional plot is centered on a real event, a car bombing in a busy downtown Saigon square in January 1952. The French Sûreté blamed the rogue nationalist Colonel Thế. The American mission blamed the Viet Minh. Greene was a war correspondent based in Saigon at the time and many scenes in the book are drawn from things he witnessed. He started writing the book in March 1952.
Greene’s first triangle is personal. The young impetuous American Alden Pyle falls in love with Phuong, the beautiful Vietnamese mistress of English reporter Thomas Fowler. The second triangle is national. Headstrong CIA Agent, Alden Pyle, leads an American attempt to establish a third force led by Colonel Thế against both the French and the Viet Minh. The same values and motives underlie both situations.
The first side of the triangles is the self-indulgent Thomas Fowler. Fowler is in love with Phuong but keeps her as his mistress since he is married although separated from his wife in England. He has a cynical view of the war, the desires of the Vietnamese people and of Phuong, who he uses just as Viet Nam is used by its European master. Fowler sees no morality on any side, the French, the Viet Minh or the American. His motto is just let it be, interference just adds to the death and injured toll and accomplishes nothing. His views are those of the colonial rulers who see their empires collapsing and take refuge in their smugness and legacy of privilege.
The second side of the triangles is the impulsive Alden Pyle, who offers to marry Phuong and take her away from the decadent Fowler and chaotic Viet Nam to his home in Boston where he believes she will thrive as a middle class housewife. Also for the purest of motives he hopes to launch a third force in the war to do away with both the evil communists and the colonial puppet government and bring democracy to the Vietnamese. Pyle is portrayed as too simple to see Phuong’s true nature – that she would not fit in conventional New England. Similarly he is shown as too simple to understand the complexities of the Vietnamese people and the war – that American style democracy would not work in their culture.
The third side of the triangles is Phuong, but we only get Fowler’s jaded picture. Just as Greene portrays his idea of a prototypical American (albeit very fitting as events turned out) so he gives us his conception of a prototypical Asian woman who never reveals her true self – mysterious and alluring, always accommodating, but underneath clever and pragmatic. Fowler needs Phuong to light his opium pipes and take care of him as he grows old, just as England and France need the colonies to support them as they decline. He sees Phuong as someone interested solely in security. Young and handsome or old and paunchy does not matter, only who will provide for her and be reliable.
Greene’s book tells us as much about Greene, as it does about Viet Nam, its people and the war. He was in MI6 during WWII, reporting to his friend secret Soviet agent Kim Philby. Some French officials suspected Greene was employed by MI6 while in Viet Nam, which he denied. He reported on the war for The Times and Le Figaro from 1951 -1954. Greene loved his time in Viet Nam and clearly patterned Fowler after himself. Greene particularly liked the restaurants, the nightlife, the opium, and the prostitutes. Oxford educated, aloof and self-absorbed, he reflects the British Empire’s administrative class alarm at upstart America’s interference in world affairs previously dominated by European powers. Fowler’s view of Phuong and by extension the Vietnamese represents Greene’s colonialist image of the Asian. Greene was right about America’s simplicity in getting involved in the Indochina war. However, his characterization of Phuong and the oriental is also simplistic – and racist as well. In spite of Greene’s presumptiveness and classist views, The Quiet American is well worth reading. Greene is a skillful writer giving us fine prose, a cleverly constructed plot and a vivid sense of an exotic time and place he knew well.
An interesting aside is the plot change in the 1958 Joseph Mankiewicz movie made to assuage politically powerful pro Diem activist groups in the US. Diem had strong support from the likes of Henry Luce and Cardinal Spellman. In the novel Greene had the American (Alden Pyle) arrange the bombing to help create a third force. American diplomats Greene knew were discussing a third force strategy at the time the novel was written. Mankiewicz instead made the English reporter, Fowler, a communist dupe who helps the communists plan the bombing. Needless to say Greene was very upset by the switch which completely changed the novel’s message calling it “a propaganda film for America”. The 2002 remake is more faithful to the novel’s plot. While Greene later recanted his support for the French, he never changed his opinion of America or America’s responsibility for the 1952 bombing.
