Literary Picks "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene

Author: Edward Pickering

Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" strikes contemporary readers as a work of remarkable prescience.
Published in 1955, the novel unfolds in French-occupied Vietnam during the French Indochina War of 1946-1954. The main characters are Fowler, a veteran British journalist, middle aged and jaded, and Pyle, a callow but idealistic American operative. Pyle is one of the first American agents in Vietnam. His presence in the country anticipates the full-fledged American invasion. His actions anticipate the disastrous outcome of that invasion -- death and destruction in the name of an ideal.
In the opening pages Fowler recalls his first glimpse of Pyle, newly arrived in southeast Asia: "I had seen him last September coming across the square [...] an unmistakably young and unused face flung at us like a dart. With his gangly legs and his crew-cut and his wide campus gaze he seemed incapable of harm."
The character of Pyle crackles with a tension between two seemingly opposite traits: innocence and harm. He is deadly innocent. He secretly aids a Vietnamese general whose faction espouses democracy -- the catchword by which Pyle lives. He helps that General plan a bombing in a crowded market that kills innocent bystanders instead of the intended targets. Fowler confronts Pyle at the scene of the bombing. Dumfounded, Pyle regards the gore -- wonders what the "wet" on his shoes could be. "Blood," replies Fowler, enraged.
The relationship that binds Pyle and Fowler together is an odd one. At first, it is friendship. Then, it darkens as Pyle wins Fowler's girl, a beautiful and deferential Vietnamese named Phuong. The method by which Pyle takes Phuong is startling. Pyle's motives are noble and unselfish, but agonizing for Fowler nonetheless. Pyle honestly believes that he, not Fowler, can best love and provide for Phuong.
Set in an exotic locale and historically accurate, "The Quiet American" is a thriller of the first rank. Love and war intermingle in the ideologically charged story of Fowler, Pyle, Phuong and Vietnam.
In a telling scene toward the end of the novel Fowler speaks to Pyle about Phuong's desertion: "I hope to God you know what you are doing there. Oh, I know your motives are good, they always are [ . . .] I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings. And that applies to your country too, Pyle.'"
Pyle's deadly innocence deprives Fowler of his woman and a country of its self-determination.