Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American”: A Study in Moral Responsibility
Graham Greene (1904-1991) “Greeneland”: Life on “the Dangerous Edge.” The Quiet American (1955)
Greene advocated political independence for Vietnam, which he thought would prevent it from becoming a communist country. He wanted America to negotiate with the Viet Cong because he didn’t want the National Liberation Front becoming the legal government of South Vietnam. Greene’s works show a discrepancy between the old liberal myths that had ruled his childhood and what his sharp eye showed him these myths had produced. Concerned for society’s eccentricities and the poor, he had doubts about the purposes of the city of London and the British Constitution. However, he chose the way that finally led him to the double life of novelist and political reporter, partly because he felt that a writer’s function is “not to change things, but to give them expression.”
Politics and Literature
Well-versed in politics, these political observations were gradually transformed into literature, and his novels have become permanently associated with the events they testify for. He thought about Catholicism as a corrective and supposed that it would change people’s attitudes and re-establish order along a more equal line without the violence associated with class conflict. Greene stated that even if there was no God and everything was untrue, it served for people to be happier with the supernatural promise than with material things. His narrators’ function was to record, not to comment, e.g., Fowler, the British reporter, the protagonist and narrative voice in The Quiet American, says: “I wrote what I saw; I took no action—even an opinion is a kind of action.”
Reportage and Fiction in The Quiet American
The Quiet American contains more direct reportage than any of his other novels, although it wasn’t Greene’s intention to turn the experiences lived in Vietnam into a novel, e.g., Thomas Fowler is the British journalist narrator that sees and speaks of what Greene saw and wrote in Vietnam. Thomas was the name he chose for himself when he was baptized as a Catholic. He had also been to Malaya and cared deeply about Vietnam (as Greene did).
Believers and Skeptics
A major distinction in many of Greene’s novels occurs between the conservative believers, who live by the Church’s dictates, and the conventional skeptics, who disobey beliefs of any sort. Instead of choosing the easy solution that the believer will be saved and the unbeliever punished, he turns this stereotyped idea inside out, a fact that can be seen in The Quiet American in a complex way: Pyle, “the quiet American,” is innocent, decisive, and self-righteous. Pyle (even if it’s against his own beliefs) isn’t able to challenge Fowler’s idea of the unchanging meanness of human nature because it is founded on Fowler’s experience. Fowler, on the other hand, is cynical, weak, and corrupted.
Conflicting Values and Comic Absurdity
According to Miriam Allot, Pyle and Fowler, the two main figures in The Quiet American who represent the New and the Old Worlds, sometimes appear to stand for conflicting systems of value which cut across the artificial boundaries of nationality and race; at the same time, they also succeed in conveying their author’s strong feeling for comic absurdity. Pyle and Fowler, contrary to the delightful and impassive Phuong, whom they both love, demonstrate their author’s skill in integrating the funny and the sad.
Innocence, Ignorance, and Moral Responsibility
In The Quiet American, Alden Pyle, who has simple humanitarian “good intentions” and a totally innate moral intelligence, ends up helping General Thé to bomb civilians with explosive bicycle pumps. Meanwhile, Fowler, as the knowing observer who is intelligent enough to see the menace in Pyle, avoids taking preventive action until it is almost too late, which illustrates the more complex aspect of Greene’s argument about moral responsibility. In the end, because he recognizes Pyle’s innocence and good intentions together with his ignorance, Fowler cannot desist from action. Pyle is led to bad actions by his “terrible notions of duty,” and Fowler discovers these concepts in himself, which leads him to act upon them.
The Irony of Duty and Betrayal
One of the various ironic implications here is that these “notions of duty” again lead towards an illegitimate process. The tragicomic temper of Greene’s writing sees that Fowler’s decision to act, which is founded on a sense of moral indignation and the desire to prevent further violence and suffering, should nevertheless result in betrayal, murder, and—as the result of yet another ironic twist to the plot—considerable material advantage to himself.
Fowler and Phuong: Love and Complicity
An understanding of Fowler’s relationship with Phuong is essential since one’s judgment on the novel depends on it to a great extent. According to Miriam Allot, Fowler illustrates the ordinary self-regarding emotions of the homme moyen sensual. His feelings for Phuong help to explain why he has never managed to remain uninvolved. These feelings are fairly complex, mingling tenderness, selfishness, compassion, pain, respect for human dignity, and a bitter sense of the limitations of human faith and love. Phuong expects little and is impassive except when Helen’s telegram arrives saying she will give Fowler a divorce. Fowler has no idea what Phuong feels, which leaves him free of the responsibility for her that Pyle feels, however absurd it may be. This involvedness is the one that finally separates Fowler from Pyle. His continued association with Thé does not present itself to him as needing any kind of moral justification. The General “is the only hope we’ve got in the struggle for power,” and the Vietnamese he sees as too childlike and uncomplicated to care for any resentment against the violence which he and Thé will continue to inflict on them as long as the struggle for power goes on. It is only after Pyle’s shattering statements that Fowler finally commits himself.
A Cycle of Innocence and Violence
The novel circles back on itself and begins where it ends, with Phuong lighting Fowler’s pipe, as he tells us about the well-intentioned but dangerously innocent American, Pyle, whose interest in the problems of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West leads him to Thé and to murder.