The Quiet American

In college, I read -- and re-read -- some of Graham Greene's best known novels: The Power and the Glory (1940), Brighton Rock (1938), The End of the Affair (1951), and The Heart of the Matter (1948), works that Greene himself considered "serious" novels, as opposed to his many popular "entertainments." One novel that I did not read at the time was The Quiet American (1955).

In fact, until this past week I had never read The Quiet American, although I'd seen the 2002 movie, starring Michael Caine in a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor.

My fascination with those Greene novels that I did read in college lay in Greene's examination, from a theological vantage, of the thoughts and actions of a number of very human characters who were either struggling to live virtuous lives, seemingly against all odds, in a complex moral universe; or struggling to escape from that moral universe and from God's "twitch upon the thread," as Greene's compatriot Evelyn Waugh described it in his novel Brideshead Revisited. I suppose that the theological component in The Quiet American did not seem sufficiently overt to draw my college-age attention to the book.

The references to religion are far less prevalent in The Quiet American than in earlier Greene novels. The book can be read simply as a period piece, a story of intrigue in Vietnam in the early 1950's, at a time when Vietnam was a French colony, France was fighting a colonial war against the Communist Vietminh insurgents, and the United States itself had no official involvement in the dispute. The narrator, Thomas Fowler, is a British correspondent who has lived in Vietnam long enough to feel at home in that country and to have shed his original desire to return to England and to his estranged wife. In Saigon, Fowler has picked up a mistress, Phuong, who serves submissively as his lover, but without failing to keep her eyes wide open with respect to her own welfare.

Fowler fears that Phuong will leave him eventually if he doesn't marry her, but his English wife, a Catholic, refuses him a divorce. His career as a newspaperman has become farcical: the French authorities provide correspondents only that news about the war they choose to provide, and his dispatches home must pass through French censorship. His life has reached stasis, a state of extreme passivity reinforced by his daily intake of opium.

The tedium of Fowler's daily life is interrupted by his relationship with a young American, Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" of the title. Pyle is the embodiment of one of the two principal mid-twentieth century British stereotypes of Americans (the other being the "noisy" American): earnest, sober, crew cut, boyish, likeable, idealistic, polite -- and wholly ignorant of the complexities of the human soul and of the sordid realities of political life. (Sort of a much younger, more likeable version of George W. Bush.)

Pyle has come to Saigon, attached to the American Economic Aid Mission. He brings with him little real knowledge about the country, but a strong commitment to a doctrine espoused by a much worshipped former professor at Harvard. Based on this "book learning," Pyle is convinced that a "third force" (neither French nor Communist) should be encouraged to seize power in Vietnam, and he has hit upon General Thé (an actual figure from those days) to head such a government.

Pyle falls in love with Phuong, despite his friendliness to Fowler, and Phuong leaves Fowler for the young American. Fowler despairs of his ability to compete with Pyle's youth and wealth, and remains inert. He discovers that Pyle is assisting import of material for plastic explosives, which General Thé's forces use for terrorist bombings against the civilian population -- thus undermining the authority of both the French and the Vietminh.

A Communist acquaintance suggests to Fowler that he invite Pyle to dinner at a favorite restaurant. Fowler senses that an assassination is being planned. Fowler is revolted by the carnage resulting from Thé's terrorism -- made possible by Pyle's assistance -- and, of course, Pyle has become inconvenient to him personally as well. He hesitates, issues the invitation, and then has second thoughts. Fowler finally encourages Pyle to skip the dinner, but does so vaguely, half-heartedly, and without ever actually warning Pyle of the danger he faces.

Pyle is never again seen alive.

Following Pyle's death, everything breaks Fowler's way. Phuong, having lost her opportunity to marry an American, quickly seizes the second best option and turns her affections back onto Fowler. Fowler unexpectedly receives a letter from his wife, granting him a divorce. Fowler can now take Phuong back to England, as has been her dream, where a promotion with his newspaper now awaits him. He has every reason for happiness.

Fowler is a totally passive man, the man supposedly archetypical of the 1950's. Throughout the book, he takes virtually no action of his own volition. He reacts rather than acts. Pyle, in his eyes, is a hapless fool. But Fowler, while far better attuned to the reality of life about him, is incapable of using his knowledge to help himself or others. Fowler's only act of consequence is his seemingly innocuous invitation to Pyle to join him for dinner. Lacking any real sense of morality -- any sense, as Greene would have put it in earlier books, of God's presence -- and confronted by the demands of his own self-interest, Fowler's genuine sympathy for Pyle is insufficient to compel him to rescind his invitation and warn Pyle of the danger. Fowler has too much to gain by Pyle's death.

I thought of the first day and Pyle sitting beside me at the Continental, with his eye on the soda-fountain across the way. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.

So ends the book. Fowler is the modern man whom Greene fears, a man almost too bland and too passive to be considered a human being.

A creature too lacking in virtue for Heaven, but too ignorant of the demands of moral conduct to merit Hell. And "no one," in any case, to whom he could say he was sorry.