Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American explores themes such as love, politics, ideals and engagement through the characters both major and minor. The three major characters in the novel, Pyle, Fowler and Phuong are in a way representative of their countries at that time. The way each looks at the other brings out the basic conflict between them.
Pyle stands for everything that is the idealistic New America, heroic, nosey with a savior mentality that wants to usher in democracy in countries that do not really welcome it. Fowler, the ageing journalist is a character that is symptomatic of the one word that recurs throughout the novel - engage. Although he claims to be neutral he realizes that in the end he just cannot be disengaged from anything. At the beginning of the novel, Fowler says, ‘I’m not involved. Not involved,’ I repeated. It had been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action - even an opinion is a kind of action (Greene 20). But towards the end of the novel, as a result of what he sees, he comes to realize, as Captain Trouin tells him, that “one day something will happen. You will take a side” (Greene 151). This is repeated by Mr. Heng, when he says “one has to take sides. If one is to remain human” (Greene 174). In the end, Fowler does take a side. He looks at the damage Pyle’s idealism is causing and decides to put an end to it even if it means eliminating Pyle. But even after Fowler sees the damage created by Pyle and goes to identify his body after his death, he cannot think of Pyle as intrinsically evil. He says, “He’s a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American” (Greene 17). Incidentally it is Phuong who uses the adjective quiet to describe Pyle first. Fowler sees Pyle as a product of his education and indoctrination. Fowler says of his death that, they killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved (Greene 23). By saying this Fowler is defending both Pyle for his actions and also himself for not getting too involved in what is happening around him. He believes himself to be a reporter who likes a good story.
If Pyle is the idealistic, nosy American, Fowler is the archetype cynical bystander, possibly a representative of his country (Britain) who sticks around for his own personal gain. Phuong can be described as passive, innocent and practical. She is looked as being innocent by Pyle who tends to have a paternalistic attitude towards her while Fowler tell him that nothing is so simple. Fowler too thinks of her as being ignorant when he says, “Phuong on the other hand was wonderfully ignorant (Greene 4).” But in reality Phuong is quite practical and capable of making up her mind. She displays this when she chooses Pyle over Fowler and later returns to Fowler when Pyle dies. She looks for financial stability and companionship and chooses the person who would give that to her. Phuong’s nature is described by both men as they want to see it. She might have been ignorant in world affairs or naïve, but she emerges as a very practical person who changes according to the circumstances. These characters are emblematic of the positions of their countries and the resultant conflict. America butts in trying to ring in democracy, Britain the bystander and Vietnam the victim, innocent and ignorant to the machinations of the world powers and their political games.
The characters in the novel are to be seen under the prism of colonialism, it being the relationship between their respective countries. Their views also set the stage for the political conflict in the novel. Pyle is idealistic, but in a dangerous way. Pyle’s idealism is of the interventionist kind; engaging in a country trying to do good without really asking them if that is what they want or need. His character stands for everything that America was at that time. One of the superpowers, it lay siege to countries and involved itself in their internal affairs to prevent the spread of communism. Just as Pyle thinks of Phuong as a naiveté and wants to protect her, America gets into Vietnam to ‘protect’ it. Unlike Pyle, Fowler is not heroic; rather he tries to disengage himself from what’s happening around him as much as possible. While Pyle justifies, violence, Fowler questions the need for violence- another theme in the novel. Unlike Pyle who believes in ushering in democracy at all means Fowler understands that it is futile to thrust democracy in countries and on people who seldom understand it or want it and have been used to a certain way of life and politics for ages. Pyle and Fowler are shown as diametrically opposite characters in the novel, but at some point Fowler wonders if he too is like Pyle. More than once in the novel Fowler asks himself the question, “Was I so different from Pyle? (Greene 185).” Fowler derides Pyle for his use of violence and says, “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he had caused (Greene 52)”. But Fowler uses violence in getting rid of Pyle when he thinks it justifies it. This brings out a conflict in Fowler’s character and makes one wonder if anyone can take a moral high ground and justify their actions.
The novel through its characters examines the ethics and morality involved in the western involvement in other countries. It questions if the westerners know what it best for the people in the countries they occupy or go to help. It also asks why they cannot be left to decide for themselves and why interference is necessary. Pyle brings out this in the novel in his desire to help Phuong at a personal level and to help her country at the national level. At both these levels, Pyle thinks about himself and his actions are clouded by his views and are not affected by what he sees. Fowler though shows the reader the absurdity of looking at others through our own myopic vision and the necessity to see them for what they are- in their own contexts and terms. Everything is political-the politics of the countries involved the emotional attachments, love and decisions made by the characters.
Works Cited
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Random House. 1955. Print.
