Quiet American. Novel.
Alden Pyle is a representative of the economic department of the American embassy in Saigon, an antagonist of Fowler, another hero of the novel. Being a generalized image of very specific political forces and methods of struggle on the world stage, the figure of O.P. carries within itself both a deeper and broad meaning. Before us is a fairly familiar type of human behavior, formed precisely in the 20th century, in an era of acute ideological confrontation between states and systems, when the ideological conviction of a person, unable to think independently and critically, turns out at the mental level into a kind of programming of judgments and actions, stereotyped thinking, striving to enclose the complexity of human relationships in ready-made frameworks and diagrams. For O.P. there is nothing individual, private, unique. He strives to bring everything that he sees and experiences himself under a system of concepts, to correlate it with some supposedly forever given rules, a model of relationships: he compares his love experience with the conclusions of Kinsey statistics, his impressions of Vietnam with the point of view of American political commentators. For him, everyone killed is either a “red danger” or a “warrior of democracy.” The artistic originality of the novel is based on the comparison and contrast of two main characters: Fowler and O.P. O.P. looks much more prosperous: he graduated from Harvard, he is from a good family, young and quite rich. Everything is subject to the rules of morality, but formal morality. So, he steals a girl from his friend Fowler, and explains this by saying that she will be better off with him, he can give her what Fowler cannot: marry her and give her a position in society; his life is reasonable and measured.
Gradually O.P. turns into a carrier of aggression. “It was in vain that even then I did not pay attention to this fanatical sparkle in his eyes, I did not understand how hypnotizing his words were, magic numbers: fifth column, third force, second coming..." - Fowler thinks about him. That third force that can and should save Vietnam, and at the same time help establish US dominance in the country, according to O.P. and those who direct it must become a national democracy. Fowler warns O.P.: “This third force of yours is all book fiction, nothing more. General The is just a thug with two or three thousand soldiers, this is not a third democracy." But O.P. cannot be convinced. He organizes an explosion in the square, and innocent women and children die, and O.P., standing in a square filled with corpses, nothing worries him: “He looked at the wet spot on his shoe and asked in a fallen voice: “What is this?” “Blood,” I said, “you’ve never seen it before, or what?” “We must definitely clean it up, you can’t go to the messenger like that,” he said...” By the time the story begins, O.P. is dead - he appears before us in Fowler’s thoughts: “I thought: “What’s the point of talking to him? will remain a righteous person, but is it possible to blame the righteous - they are never guilty of anything. They can only be restrained or destroyed. The righteous person is also a kind of mentally ill person."
Thomas Fowler - English journalist working in South Vietnam from 1951-1955. A tired, mentally devastated man, in many ways similar to Scobie, the hero of another Graham Greene novel, “The Heart of the Matter.” He believes that his duty is to report only facts to newspapers; their assessment does not concern him, he does not want to interfere in anything, and strives to remain a neutral observer. T.F. has been in Saigon for a long time, and the only thing he values that keeps him there is his love for the Vietnamese girl Phu-ong. But the American Alden Pyle appears and takes Phuong away.
The novel begins with the murder of Pai la and with the fact that Phuong returns to T.F. But then there is a flashback. The police are looking for the criminal, and in parallel with this, T.F. remembers Pyle: he saved him during an attack by Vietnamese partisans, literally taking him to a safe place, risking own life.
As if good deed? Pyle annoys T.F. with his ideas, his peremptory behavior, bordering on fanaticism. Having finally learned that the explosion in the square, carried out by the Americans, which killed women and children, was the work of Pyle, T.F. cannot stand it and hands it over to the Vietnamese partisans: “You should have looked at him... He stood there and He said that this was all a sad misunderstanding, that there was supposed to be a parade...
There, on the square, a woman's child was killed... She covered it with a straw hat." After Pyle's death, T.F.'s fate somehow arranges itself: he remains in Vietnam - "this honest country" where poverty is not covered up with bashful veils; the woman who once easily left him for Pyle now comes back easily and sadly with the same naturalness of advantage.
Writing a novel Quiet American Graham Greene completed in mid-1955. Another full ten years remained until the undeclared aggression was followed by a direct order from the President of the Marine Corps and the systematic bombing of North Vietnam. However, stretching over for many years dirty The US war in Vietnam was already essentially underway. It was started by the hands of not brave green berets, A quiet Americans people like Alden Pyle.
Grinevsky Alden Pyle is unshakably convinced that he is called upon to implement the high mission that the United States fulfills in relation to all humanity. This point is emphasized several times in the book, as Fowler recalls: ...he was absorbed in the pressing problems of democracy and the West's responsibility for the order of the world; he firmly decided - I learned about THIS quite soon - to do good, and not to just any individual, but to the whole country, part of the world, the whole world. Well, here he was in his element: at his feet lay the universe, which needed to be put in order. Moreover, Pyle knows exactly what THIS order should be from the lectures of university mentors, from the writings of his idol York Harding, whose books became for him textbooks of political literacy, and perhaps even life.
Stuffed with the ideas of York and Harding, Pyle, as they say, breaks into someone else’s monastery with his own (or rather, slipped to him) charter and begins to energetically create what he sincerely believes good. He is not tormented by any doubts, the Vietnamese themselves. The recent Harvard graduate is as at home in Vietnam as his black dog is in Fowler's room.
Official service in the economic assistance mission is only a convenient cover for his real activities related to the performance of special tasks of a sensitive nature. Outwardly, Pyle seems to be completely different from the vaunted supermen with the right to kill. Yes, he doesn’t kill anyone with his own hands, he doesn’t carry a Colt under his arm, he just faithfully serves the idea Pax Americana. His clear programming to serve this destructive idea leads to the fact that even seeing the dead man, he did not notice his wounds and muttered: Red danger or Warrior of Democracy . Pyle is unable to understand the suffering he causes to others, but every time he experiences almost physical pain when reality turns out to be inconsistent with the ideas he has internalized about it.
It is covered - as Green writes - with impenetrable armor good intentions and ignorance. Clad in this armor, Pyle behaves quite naturally, like a newly minted simple-minded person, but unlike Voltaire’s Huron, he is guided not by common sense and the wise voice of nature, but by false ideas and standards hammered into his head common good. At the same time, the victim of the crushing innocence of the young Yankee is constantly not himself, but someone else.
Having innocently believed in Harding's idea of the need to create in Vietnam third force To subjugate the country to American influence and to counter the communist danger, Pyle seeks out such a force, directs its actions, supplies it with money and weapons. As a result of plastic explosions toys, assigned by him to General The, innocent people are dying.
Equally innocently, - or rather, unceremoniously - as a sphere of politics, acts quiet American and in the field of human relations. If terrorist attacks, carried out on his instructions, are justified by him with pompous arguments about the need to protect democracy, then in the same way, taking away without hesitation a mistress from a person to whom he imposed his friendship, Pyle covers up his own selfishness with imaginary concern for her happiness and moral considerations. His idealism is imbued with the spirit of militant practicalism, and highly moral maxims smack of hypocrisy.
Spinoza has a famous treatise where he proves the principles of ethics geometric method. Green in Quiet American proves ethical postulates artistic method, reaching high degree realistic generalization, but at the same time resorts to the help geometry. Banal love triangle he clearly fits into the circle of the most acute socio-political and moral issues, which filled the novel with deep content, made it possible to reflect the multifaceted movement of life in a selected limited space in a specific historical period of time and prove a number of ethical theorems of universal significance.
The most important of them (formulated in the novel by the Vietnamese communist Han) reads: Sooner or later you have to take someone's side. If you want to remain human. Fowler wants to remain human, and he is endowed with that (albeit at first muted) sense of personal responsibility that is inherent in all of Green's most sympathetic characters. It is this that prompts the journalist to assist Vietnamese patriots - such as Han - who, in retaliation, kill quiet American, which brought so much suffering to their people.
About how many casualties can really entail quiet a man who himself became a victim of a soulless but well-oiled machine is told in the novel Our man in Havana . Its action takes place in Cuba under the dictatorship of Batista, on the eve of the revolution, the approach of which he senses bloody vulture Captain Segura. English intelligence recruits a weak-willed man - vacuum cleaner dealer Wormold, imposing on him the role of their secret agent. He has absolutely no information to join the ranks of the omnipresent, invincible and irresistible James Bonds. But a powerful mechanism Intelligence service, like a giant vacuum cleaner, begins to suck Wormold into its insides, drawing in at the same time the people around him and people simply invented by him. From dust false information and false ideas about reality, in the depths of this mechanism with hypertrophied conceit, a certain illusory reality is created according to prepared clichés, seriously threatening the true reality. Reality is adjusted to fit fiction. The farcical situation in this, as in other Greene novels, only emphasizes the seriousness of the story that worries the writer.
In the fate of his heroes, Greene sees timeless, eternal conflicts, but places them in the living, modern environment. He conveys the character of time exhaustively and completely, notes the prominent English critic Walter Allen. - Thinking about the fate of man, Green came to his truth, and therefore there is no deliberateness in his appeal to topical events, just as the choice of the detective genre in the naked, classic form of the pursuit of a person is not accidental.
In contrast to Saavedra from Honorary Consul . Green is constantly interested in political abstraction, but living socio-political concreteness. At the same time, even when he writes on the most topical topics, there is still a deep philosophical subtext in his books, caused by the author’s intense thoughts about good and evil, about eternal problems of human existence.
The meaning of a love plot in a novel
G. Green "The Quiet American"
Graham Greene (1904 - 1991) - an outstanding English writer, and the author of numerous works, he earned worldwide fame and a reputation as a true master of prose - in particular the political novel.
Greene began writing early, while still a student at Oxford University, where he entered in 1922. He worked as a journalist for the Nottingham Journal, then as a freelance correspondent for The Times. As a journalist, he traveled a lot, lived in Africa, Mexico, and Vietnam. After World War II he was a correspondent for the New Republic magazine in Indochina.
From the beginning literary activity(late 20s) Greene acted in two disparate genres - an “entertaining” novel with a detective twist and a “serious” novel, exploring the depths of human psychology and colored with philosophical reflections on human nature. An extremely complex writer, Graham Greene never ceased to worry about man and sought to understand the forces that control his actions and determine his fate. Greene's books always reveal great love for a person, anxiety and pain for him. Betrayal, murder, crime are the usual themes of Greene, a novelist and playwright, both in the “entertaining” and in the “serious” genre. His “serious” novels always contain features and elements of the detective genre. The writer is interested in the cause of the crime, although he does not always find its realistic motivation.
Greene's novel The Quiet American, which appeared in 1955, was perceived by many critics as an expression of a turning point in creative development writer. But the appearance of this politically acute and realistic novel was prepared by the entire previous evolution of Graham Greene, and in particular by the novel “The Heart of the Matter,” written seven years earlier. If the problem of colonialism was not raised in this novel, then sympathy for the oppressed colonial peoples and indignation at the practices of the colonialists were completely obvious in it. With all its intonation, the novel “The Heart of the Matter” confirms the shift emerging in the late 40s, which is consolidated in “The Quiet American” and then in the novel “Our Man in Havana.”
In The Quiet American, Greene delivered his first definitive verdict on colonialism. Shocked to the core by the brutal murders civilians(he witnessed all this in South Vietnam), Green paints true pictures of what he saw and what excited him. The novel is based on real events, but the author does not present them accurately: “I admit ... deviations without any remorse, because I wrote a novel, not a historical essay ... Even historical events, and they were removed by me." Lodge D. Different lives Graham Greene.
Greene's irony, like his mastery of characterization, achieves heightened expressiveness and strength in The Quiet American. However artistic originality The book is based primarily on the method of contrasting characteristics of the two main characters of the novel, on their continuous opposition, which culminates in an extremely ironic ending. In Ivasheva. Graham Greene.
The English journalist Fowler, on whose behalf the story is told, and the young American diplomat Pyle, connected from the very beginning of the novel by a far from simple relationship, are gradually revealed to the reader from an unexpected side: they move and change places in the reader’s perception. A tired, mentally devastated man working as a correspondent for an English newspaper in South Vietnam, Fowler perceives himself as a reporter whose task is to give only facts. The assessment of these facts, as it seems to him at the beginning, does not concern him. A man who has lost his ideals and is deprived of any aspirations, Fowler tries to remain an outside observer of the atrocities that are happening around him, and in love seeks consolation from the melancholy that torments him. While Fowler not only does not want, but, as it seems to him, cannot interfere in anything, take up anything active position Nicknamed the "Quiet American" for his apparent decency and level-headedness, Pyle is passionate about bringing democratic values to the East.
At the very beginning of the novel, it becomes known that Pyle has been killed. Vietnamese beauty Phuong returns to Fowler. Thus, the outcome of the duel between the “quiet American” and the world-weary journalist is known in advance to the reader. Concerned, Phuong doesn’t understand why Pyle has been gone for so long, she is at Fowler’s house, making him tea “just like six months ago... it promised peace again.” The woman who once easily left him, with the same naturalness of benefit, now easily and sadly comes back. The hero notices that the girl now styles her hair differently: the complex hairstyle she wore before did not like the American.
Lying on the bed, Fowler muses: "I wonder what they talk to each other about? Phuong is amazingly ignorant: if the conversation turned to Hitler, she would interrupt you to ask who he was."
At the very beginning of the novel, already in the conversation between Fowler and Phuong, the author hints at how differently the American and the Englishman treated the girl: one wanted to change her, although he promised to marry. The other didn’t make any promises, but he loved Phuong for who she was and didn’t try to change anything about her, be it her hairstyle or her outlook on life. He understands that it is impossible to keep this girl talking about democracy: “Loving an Annamite is like loving a bird: they chirp and sing on your pillow.” The name Phuong means "phoenix" in Vietnamese. And indeed, she is very similar to an exotic bird - beautiful, bright and narrow-minded.
The heroes do not yet know that Pyle was killed, and Fowler advises the girl to teach him to smoke opium so that he will definitely stay with her: “Smoking opium depleted male strength, but they preferred a faithful lover to a passionate one." The hero himself never lived a day without opium. They talk like close friends, and not like ex-lovers. No explanations, no scenes of jealousy - Fowler, tired of life, does not want to sort things out. Moreover, he understands that this is useless - the woman is driven by a banal calculation. Looking at Phuong, the hero remembers Baudelaire's poems: “my child, my sister.” This is exactly how he treats her - with fatherly tenderness. Out loud he says: “I wish I were Pyle.”
It turns out that Pyle was killed. Main character looks sadly at Phuong: “She linked her fate with youth, hope for the future, stability in her views, but they let her down much more than old age and despair.” These thoughts contain boundless understanding, love and care. However, police suspect that the English correspondent may have killed the American diplomat out of jealousy. Phuong doesn't understand what's going on and just asks when Pyle will come.
The journalist recalls how he met the “quiet American.” A well-mannered, well-balanced young man, the diplomat Pyle was enthusiastic and constantly talked about democracy and civilization, like an obedient student of his Harvard professors. “The East needs a third force,” he argued. Pyle first met Phuong in the same Continental about two months after his arrival. Pyle addressed Phuong as a noble lady. Fowler could afford to speak to her in a commanding tone: “I... ordered Phuong: go and take us a table.” Seeing prostitutes, the American is shocked - there is something childish in his sanctimonious aversion to corrupt girls.
Fowler then compared himself to Pyle: a cynical, rude man “of middle age with slightly bloodshot eyes and a tendency to be overweight, awkward in love.” And Pyle, “so nice and positive,” meanwhile danced with Phuong, and Phuong was miraculously good that evening. She liked the American's emphasized politeness and stiffness. The girl’s sister immediately inquired about him from Fowler: the son of wealthy parents, not married - the woman’s eyes immediately lit up with greed. Miss Hay did not like the Englishman, she dreamed of a more profitable match for her sister, “the most beautiful girl in Saigon." Sister Phuong had no idea that such a "love deal" was not much different from prostitution - this woman was stupid, very calculating and cunning. Pyle really liked her. "What a sweet, cultured woman," he admired. Thus, it becomes clear to the reader that the young diplomat does not understand anything about people and values only external decency.
Watching Phuong dance, Fowler wonders why he is so drawn to death. The journalist understood that there was nothing permanent in the world, that sooner or later Phuong would leave him, and “only death did not promise any changes.”
It was after this evening that Phuong called the American young man “quiet,” and this definition surprisingly firmly stuck with him.
Fowler decides that "it's time to look at the war" and goes north. He witnesses a skirmish on the Fat Diem Canal. He sees the terrible cruelty of what is happening: killed children, destroyed streets. “I hate war,” he thought. In the officers' meeting, Pyle woke him up. Chuckling stupidly, he explained that he came “because it might be interesting here.” Embarrassed, the American added that the main purpose of his visit was to explain himself: “I had to tell you... that I am in love with Phuong.” The journalist reacts to such a confession with amazing restraint, and Pyle looks at him as if he were crazy. Fowler is irritated by his arrogance: “You seem to have no doubt that you can separate us.”
Pyle imposes his friendship on the Englishman, explaining this by kinship of souls - they love the same woman: “She will have to make a choice between us. It will only be fair.” The hero anticipates his loneliness. Pyle is young, he has money, and he is a “beggar”; besides, his wife will never give him a divorce. The American childishly admires the “chic” calm with which Fowler conducts this conversation: “After all, for both of us, her interests are above all.” “I don’t give a damn about her interests!” Fowler exploded. “Take them for your health. But I need her herself. I want her to live with me. Let her feel bad, but let her live with me...”
This emotional conversation between the characters reveals the whole truth about their love for Phuong. The Englishman loves her selfishly, simply and with all his heart, just as this tropical bird girl deserves. The American is “ready to make her happy”: “She cannot be happy... in her situation. She needs children.” He measures her by his Western sanctimonious standards, he is convinced that happiness for Phuong is what her sister wants for her. Pyle is convinced that the girl will prefer him. Despite his naivety and inexperience, he is surprisingly self-confident. He even reproaches Fowler for “not fully understanding Phuong.” “Are you sure that there is something to understand about Phuong?” - the Englishman asked in response.
Pyle confidently believes that his thoughts are the ultimate truth, that the values he brought to Vietnam from his native Boston should be universal values. This is reflected both in his conversations about the war and in his plans for Phuong. The young diplomat is convinced that “democracy” and the “third force” are what will make the Vietnamese people happy, and marriage and position in society are what will make the beautiful Phuong happy.
The struggle of Fowler and Pyle is a struggle between the old and the new - the tired Old World and self-confident America. No wonder the Englishman mentally tries to explain the arrogance of the “quiet American” high rate dollar: “Of course, dollar love implies a legal marriage, and a legitimate son - the heir to capital, and “American Mother’s Day.” It is with this kind of love that the young diplomat loves Phuong, and it is precisely the kind of love her greedy sister would want for the girl. With this fake, Pyle and him such are trying to replace the real feeling. However, Phuong is not an “American mother,” but the young diplomat is not able to understand this.
Fowler writes a letter to England: he decides to refuse a promotion and continue working as a correspondent in Vietnam, explaining this for “personal reasons.” However, then he decides not to mention them and tears out the last pages of the letter: “all the same, “personal motives” will only serve as a reason for ridicule. Everyone already knew that each correspondent had his own “native” lover. Editor-in-Chief will laugh about this in a conversation with the editor on duty, and he, thinking about this piquant situation, will return to his house in Streatham and go to bed next to his faithful wife, whom he took from Glasgow many years ago.”
The author makes it clear to the reader that Phuong is not just a “native sweetheart” or a “Glasgowian imported” wife for Fowler. He contrasts his feelings for her with the vulgarity and boredom of ordinary marriages. His love is so pure and sincere that even the thought of bringing it to the court of his editors made the hero feel uneasy.
Pyle comes to visit Fowler. His Hawaiian shirt resembles the breeding plumage of a male, his huge black dog behaves like a master in the Englishman's apartment. The guest annoys the owner more and more, especially since Pyle's diplomatic activities begin to arouse suspicion. The Americans themselves are like this black dog: having forgotten that they are “guests” in Vietnam, they feel “at home” and try to establish their own rules.
Phuong arrives - perhaps her sister sent her after learning that Pyle had come to visit. The most ridiculous declaration of love occurs. The American speaks almost no French, the girl understands English poorly, and the owner of the house volunteered to be a translator. Pyle speaks solemnly and reminds Fowler of “a butler who leads tourists around the mansion of a noble family. Pyle’s heart was the stately chambers, and he only allowed a sneak peek into the living rooms through a crack.”
This explanation makes Pyle look stupid and insensitive. He demanded Fowler's presence during the declaration of love; he speaks of marriage as a commercial transaction: “When my father dies, I will have about fifty thousand dollars. My health is excellent: I can provide a medical certificate.” And this comes from the lips of a man who experiences righteous disgust at the sight of prostitutes. Only Fowler feels the comedy of what is happening. “Would you like me to add a little ardor?” - the “involuntarily translator” suggests to the opponent.
Phuong refused Pyle. The arrogant diplomat is shocked - his offer seemed like a lucrative deal that the girl could not refuse. He leaves with nothing, and Fowler writes a letter to his wife asking her for a divorce: “I am asking you for recklessness - an act that is out of character for you.” The girl says that she is ready to follow the hero to London - she wants to see the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers. “You’ll have to go to America to see the skyscrapers,” Fowler replies, admiring her simplicity—Phuong would never have had the cunning to hide her lies.
It so happens that Pyle and Fowler have to spend the night with two terrified sentries on a watchtower among the rice fields. There, an ideological dispute takes place between them. “They don’t want communism,” says the American. “They want their fill of rice,” the Englishman objects. The truth is on the side of the journalist: “We instilled our ideas in them. We trained them dangerous game, that's why we're hanging around here, hoping our throats won't be cut. We deserve to have them cut off for us." But the young diplomat is convinced of the correctness of the truths gleaned from the books of York Harding: "If we lose Indochina ..."
We are talking about Phuong. Fowler is trying to dispel the romantic flair that the American created around the girl. She says that she loves looking at pictures in magazines, that she used to dance for money with visitors to the Grand Monde restaurant. Pyle is shocked by this. The journalist explains to Pyle what kind of Phuong she is. He says that people like her are loved for their kindness, for their confidence in tomorrow, for gifts, and hate “because you hit them, for injustice.” In Western society this would be considered vulgar, but Phuong is just a simple-minded child.
“I’m still in love, but I’m already pretty worn out. Now I know that I don’t need anyone except Phuong,” Fowler frankly admits. Pyle admits that he does not understand everything that the Englishman is explaining to him. It again becomes obvious to the reader that these people are at different stages of moral development.
The tower is under attack. The journalist was wounded, and an American saves his life. He explains his feat by saying that otherwise he would not have been able to look Phuong in the eyes. When Fowler returns from the hospital, the girl confesses to him that during his absence she often visited her sister. There she, of course, had the opportunity to see Pyle. A letter arrived in which the wife refuses to give the hero a divorce: “Marriage does not prevent you from leaving women, does it? (...) You will bring her to England, where she will be a stranger and abandoned, and when you leave her, she will feel terribly lonely ". We must admit that the woman is right in her fears. She recalls that Fowler had previously experienced similar feelings for another woman and wrote similar letters.
The hero is upset, and Phuong tries to console him, but her sister says through her lips: “You can assign me security or insure my life in my favor.” Its simplicity delights the hero. He is tired of conventions and falsehood, which is why he is so pleased to see this beauty nearby, he selfishly does not want her to leave. And Fowler wrote to Pyle, lying in the letter that his wife was ready to give a divorce. However, the lie was revealed, and, of course, not without the help of Miss Hay. The American and the Englishman are once again sorting things out.
“The word “love” is used only in the West. People here don’t know painful attractions. You will suffer, Pyle, if you don’t understand this in time,” Fowler cynically declares. He hints at Pyle’s suspicious activities, again tries to explain to him what Phuong really is, but finds himself now “figuring out” her character no worse than Pyle. One day, Phuong does not return home and goes to Pyle.
Fowler is changing, anxiety is gradually growing in him, which he is trying to suppress and drown out. His hatred of an inhumane, unjust war is embodied in his actions: he renounces his neutrality and conducts an investigation into Pyle's activities. The true essence of the “quiet American” is gradually revealed to the reader: with cynical composure he organizes the mass murder of women and children, beneficial to his American “masters”, but he almost faints at the sight of blood and, out of cleanliness, rushes to erase its traces from his immaculately polished shoes. Fowler decides to hand Pyle over to the American partisans, and the “quiet American” is killed.
A thought that illustrates main idea of the novel, Fowler’s friend Captain Truen says: “We all get involved in something, you just have to give in to the feeling, and then you can’t get out. Both in war and in love, it’s not for nothing that they are always compared.” For love, like for truth, you have to fight. The desire to remain neutral and not stain oneself makes a person look like a “quiet American” wiping blood from his polished shoes.
The artistic originality of Graham Greene's novel is based on the comparison and contrast of the two main characters. Love story helps reveal their characters as deeply as possible - the fight for Phuong's heart brought Pyle and Fowler face to face and forced them to reveal their true selves.
Bibliography
Green G. Comedians. - Chisinau, 1982
Foreign literature of the 20th century / Ed. L.G. Andreeva. M., 2003
Ivasheva V. Graham Greene. - In the book: Ivasheva V. Destiny English writers. M., 1989
Lodge D. The Different Lives of Graham Greene. - http://magazines.russ.ru/inostran/2001/12/lodge.html
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The meaning of a love plot in a novel
G. Green "The Quiet American"
Graham Greene (1904 - 1991) is an outstanding English writer, and the author of numerous works, he has gained worldwide fame and a reputation as a true master of prose - in particular the political novel.
Greene began writing early, while still a student at Oxford University, where he entered in 1922. He worked as a journalist for the Nottingham Journal, then as a freelance correspondent for The Times. As a journalist, he traveled a lot, lived in Africa, Mexico, and Vietnam. After World War II he was a correspondent for the New Republic magazine in Indochina.
From the beginning of his literary activity (late 20s), Greene acted in two disparate genres - an “entertaining” novel with a detective twist and a “serious” novel, exploring the depths of human psychology and colored by philosophical reflections on human nature. An extremely complex writer, Graham Greene never ceased to worry about man and sought to understand the forces that control his actions and determine his fate. Greene's books always reveal great love for a person, anxiety and pain for him. Betrayal, murder, crime are the usual themes of Greene, a novelist and playwright, both in the “entertaining” and in the “serious” genre. His “serious” novels always contain features and elements of the detective genre. The writer is interested in the cause of the crime, although he does not always find its realistic motivation.
Greene's novel The Quiet American, which appeared in 1955, was perceived by many critics as an expression of a turning point in the writer's creative development. But the appearance of this politically acute and realistic novel was prepared by the entire previous evolution of Graham Greene, and in particular by the novel “The Heart of the Matter,” written seven years earlier. If the problem of colonialism was not raised in this novel, then sympathy for the oppressed colonial peoples and indignation at the practices of the colonialists were completely obvious in it. With all its intonation, the novel “The Heart of the Matter” confirms the shift emerging in the late 40s, which is consolidated in “The Quiet American” and then in the novel “Our Man in Havana.”
In The Quiet American, Greene delivered his first definitive verdict on colonialism. Shocked to the core by the brutal killings of civilians (he witnessed all this in South Vietnam), Green paints true pictures of what he saw and what moved him. The novel is based on real events, but the author does not present them accurately: “I allow... deviations without any remorse, because I wrote a novel, not a historical essay... Even historical events were displaced by me.” Lodge D. The Different Lives of Graham Greene.
Greene's irony, like his mastery of characterization, achieves heightened expressiveness and strength in The Quiet American. However, the artistic originality of the book is based primarily on the method of contrasting characteristics of the two main characters of the novel, on their continuous opposition, which culminates in an extremely ironic ending. In Ivasheva. Graham Greene.
The English journalist Fowler, on whose behalf the story is told, and the young American diplomat Pyle, connected from the very beginning of the novel by a far from simple relationship, are gradually revealed to the reader from an unexpected side: they move and change places in the reader’s perception. A tired, mentally devastated man working as a correspondent for an English newspaper in South Vietnam, Fowler perceives himself as a reporter whose task is to give only facts. The assessment of these facts, as it seems to him at the beginning, does not concern him. A man who has lost his ideals and is deprived of any aspirations, Fowler tries to remain an outside observer of the atrocities that are happening around him, and in love seeks consolation from the melancholy that torments him. While Fowler not only does not want, but, it seems to him, cannot interfere in anything, take an active position in anything, Pyle, nicknamed the “quiet American” for his apparent decency and balance, is enthusiastic to bring East democratic values.
At the very beginning of the novel, it becomes known that Pyle has been killed. Vietnamese beauty Phuong returns to Fowler. Thus, the outcome of the duel between the “quiet American” and the world-weary journalist is known in advance to the reader. Concerned, Phuong doesn’t understand why Pyle has been gone for so long, she is at Fowler’s house, making him tea “just like six months ago... it promised peace again.” The woman who once easily left him, with the same naturalness of benefit, now easily and sadly comes back. The hero notices that the girl now styles her hair differently: the complex hairstyle she wore before did not like the American.
Lying on the bed, Fowler muses: "I wonder what they talk to each other about? Phuong is amazingly ignorant: if the conversation turned to Hitler, she would interrupt you to ask who he was."
At the very beginning of the novel, already in the conversation between Fowler and Phuong, the author hints at how differently the American and the Englishman treated the girl: one wanted to change her, although he promised to marry. The other didn’t make any promises, but he loved Phuong for who she was and didn’t try to change anything about her, be it her hairstyle or her outlook on life. He understands that it is impossible to keep this girl talking about democracy: “Loving an Annamite is like loving a bird: they chirp and sing on your pillow.” The name Phuong means "phoenix" in Vietnamese. And indeed, she is very similar to an exotic bird - beautiful, bright and narrow-minded.
The heroes do not yet know that Pyle was killed, and Fowler advises the girl to teach him to smoke opium so that he would definitely stay with her: “Smoking opium depleted male strength, but they preferred a faithful lover to a passionate one.” The hero himself never lived a day without opium. They talk like close friends, not like ex-lovers. No explanations, no scenes of jealousy - Fowler, tired of life, does not want to sort things out. Moreover, he understands that this is useless - the woman is driven by a banal calculation. Looking at Phuong, the hero remembers Baudelaire's poems: “my child, my sister.” This is exactly how he treats her - with fatherly tenderness. Out loud he says: “I wish I were Pyle.”
It turns out that Pyle was killed. The main character looks at Phuong with sadness: “She linked her fate with youth, hope for the future, stability in her views, but they let her down much more than old age and despair.” These thoughts contain boundless understanding, love and care. However, police suspect that the English correspondent may have killed the American diplomat out of jealousy. Phuong doesn't understand what's going on and just asks when Pyle will come.
The journalist recalls how he met the “quiet American.” A well-mannered, well-balanced young man, the diplomat Pyle was enthusiastic and constantly talked about democracy and civilization, like an obedient student of his Harvard professors. “The East needs a third force,” he argued. Pyle first met Phuong in the same Continental about two months after his arrival. Pyle addressed Phuong as a noble lady. Fowler could afford to speak to her in a commanding tone: “I... ordered Phuong: go and take us a table.” Seeing prostitutes, the American is shocked - there is something childish in his sanctimonious aversion to corrupt girls.
Fowler then compared himself to Pyle: a cynical, rude man “of middle age with slightly bloodshot eyes and a tendency to be overweight, awkward in love.” And Pyle, “so nice and positive,” meanwhile danced with Phuong, and Phuong was miraculously good that evening. She liked the American's emphasized politeness and stiffness. The girl’s sister immediately inquired about him from Fowler: the son of wealthy parents, not married - the woman’s eyes immediately lit up with greed. Miss Hay did not like the Englishman; she dreamed of a more profitable match for her sister, “the most beautiful girl in Saigon.” Sister Phuong had no idea that such a “love deal” was not much different from prostitution - this woman was stupid, very calculating and cunning. Pyle really liked her. “What a sweet, cultured woman,” he admired. Thus, it becomes clear to the reader that the young diplomat does not understand anything about people and values only external decency.
Watching Phuong dance, Fowler wonders why he is so drawn to death. The journalist understood that there was nothing permanent in the world, that sooner or later Phuong would leave him, and “only death did not promise any changes.”
It was after this evening that Phuong called the American young man “quiet,” and this definition surprisingly firmly stuck with him.
Fowler decides that "it's time to look at the war" and goes north. He witnesses a skirmish on the Fat Diem Canal. He sees the terrible cruelty of what is happening: killed children, destroyed streets. “I hate war,” he thought. In the officers' meeting, Pyle woke him up. Chuckling stupidly, he explained that he came “because it might be interesting here.” Embarrassed, the American added that the main purpose of his visit was to explain himself: “I had to tell you... that I am in love with Phuong.” The journalist reacts to such a confession with amazing restraint, and Pyle looks at him as if he were crazy. Fowler is irritated by his arrogance: “You seem to have no doubt that you can separate us.”
Pyle imposes his friendship on the Englishman, explaining this by kinship of souls - they love the same woman: “She will have to make a choice between us. It will only be fair.” The hero anticipates his loneliness. Pyle is young, he has money, and he is a “beggar”; besides, his wife will never give him a divorce. The American childishly admires the “chic” calm with which Fowler conducts this conversation: “After all, for both of us, her interests are above all.” “I don’t give a damn about her interests!” Fowler exploded. “Take them for your health. But I need her herself. I want her to live with me. Let her feel bad, but let her live with me...”
This emotional conversation between the characters reveals the whole truth about their love for Phuong. The Englishman loves her selfishly, simply and with all his heart, just as this tropical bird girl deserves. The American is “ready to make her happy”: “She cannot be happy... in her situation. She needs children.” He measures her by his Western sanctimonious standards, he is convinced that happiness for Phuong is what her sister wants for her. Pyle is convinced that the girl will prefer him. Despite his naivety and inexperience, he is surprisingly self-confident. He even reproaches Fowler for “not fully understanding Phuong.” “Are you sure that there is something to understand about Phuong?” - the Englishman asked in response.
Pyle confidently believes that his thoughts are the ultimate truth, that the values he brought to Vietnam from his native Boston should be universal values. This is reflected both in his conversations about the war and in his plans for Phuong. The young diplomat is convinced that “democracy” and the “third force” are what will make the Vietnamese people happy, and marriage and position in society are what will make the beautiful Phuong happy.
The struggle of Fowler and Pyle is a struggle between the old and the new - the tired Old World and self-confident America. It is not for nothing that the Englishman mentally tries to explain the arrogance of the “quiet American” with the high dollar exchange rate: “Of course, dollar love implies a legal marriage, and a legitimate son - the heir to capital, and “the day of the American mother.” It is with this kind of love that the young diplomat loves Phuong, it is with this kind of love for her greedy sister would like a girl. With this fake, Pyle and others like him are trying to replace real feeling. However, Phuong is not an “American mother,” but the young diplomat is not able to understand this.
Fowler writes a letter to England: he decides to refuse a promotion and continue working as a correspondent in Vietnam, explaining this for “personal reasons.” However, then he decides not to mention them and tears out the last pages of the letter: “all the same, “personal motives” will only serve as a reason for ridicule. Everyone already knew that each correspondent has his own “native” lover. The editor-in-chief will laugh about this in conversation with the editor on duty, and he, thinking about this piquant situation, will return to his house in Streatham and go to bed next to the faithful wife whom he took from Glasgow many years ago.
The author makes it clear to the reader that Phuong is not just a “native sweetheart” or a “Glasgowian imported” wife for Fowler. He contrasts his feelings for her with the vulgarity and boredom of ordinary marriages. His love is so pure and sincere that even the thought of bringing it to the court of his editors made the hero feel uneasy.
Pyle comes to visit Fowler. His Hawaiian shirt resembles the breeding plumage of a male, his huge black dog behaves like a master in the Englishman's apartment. The guest annoys the owner more and more, especially since Pyle's diplomatic activities begin to arouse suspicion. The Americans themselves are like this black dog: having forgotten that they are “guests” in Vietnam, they feel “at home” and try to establish their own rules.
Phuong arrives - perhaps her sister sent her after learning that Pyle had come to visit. The most ridiculous declaration of love occurs. The American speaks almost no French, the girl understands English poorly, and the owner of the house volunteered to be a translator. Pyle speaks solemnly and reminds Fowler of “a butler who leads tourists around the mansion of a noble family. Pyle’s heart was the stately chambers, and he only allowed a sneak peek into the living rooms through a crack.”
This explanation makes Pyle look stupid and insensitive. He demanded Fowler's presence during the declaration of love; he speaks of marriage as a commercial transaction: “When my father dies, I will have about fifty thousand dollars. My health is excellent: I can provide a medical certificate.” And this comes from the lips of a man who experiences righteous disgust at the sight of prostitutes. Only Fowler feels the comedy of what is happening. “Would you like me to add a little ardor?” - the “involuntarily translator” suggests to the opponent.
Phuong refused Pyle. The arrogant diplomat is shocked - his offer seemed like a lucrative deal that the girl could not refuse. He leaves with nothing, and Fowler writes a letter to his wife asking her for a divorce: “I am asking you for recklessness - an act that is out of character for you.” The girl says that she is ready to follow the hero to London - she wants to see the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers. “You’ll have to go to America to see the skyscrapers,” Fowler replies, admiring her simplicity—Phuong would never have had the cunning to hide her lies.
It so happens that Pyle and Fowler have to spend the night with two terrified sentries on a watchtower among the rice fields. There, an ideological dispute takes place between them. “They don’t want communism,” says the American. “They want their fill of rice,” the Englishman objects. The truth is on the side of the journalist: “We instilled our ideas in them. We taught them a dangerous game, which is why we are hanging around here in the hope that our throats will not be cut. We deserve to have them cut.” But the young diplomat is convinced of the correctness of the truths gleaned from the books of York Harding: “If we lose Indochina...”
We are talking about Phuong. Fowler is trying to dispel the romantic flair that the American created around the girl. She says that she loves looking at pictures in magazines, that she used to dance for money with visitors to the Grand Monde restaurant. Pyle is shocked by this. The journalist explains to Pyle what kind of Phuong she is. He says that people like her are loved for kindness, for confidence in the future, for gifts, and they hate “because you hit them, for injustice.” In Western society this would be considered vulgar, but Phuong is just a simple-minded child.
“I’m still in love, but I’m already pretty worn out. Now I know that I don’t need anyone except Phuong,” Fowler frankly admits. Pyle admits that he does not understand everything that the Englishman is explaining to him. It again becomes obvious to the reader that these people are at different stages of moral development.
The tower is under attack. The journalist was wounded, and an American saves his life. He explains his feat by saying that otherwise he would not have been able to look Phuong in the eyes. When Fowler returns from the hospital, the girl confesses to him that during his absence she often visited her sister. There she, of course, had the opportunity to see Pyle. A letter arrived in which the wife refuses to give the hero a divorce: “Marriage does not prevent you from leaving women, does it? (...) You will bring her to England, where she will be a stranger and abandoned, and when you leave her, she will feel terribly lonely ". We must admit that the woman is right in her fears. She recalls that Fowler had previously experienced similar feelings for another woman and wrote similar letters.
The hero is upset, and Phuong tries to console him, but her sister says through her lips: “You can assign me security or insure my life in my favor.” Its simplicity delights the hero. He is tired of conventions and falsehood, which is why he is so pleased to see this beauty nearby, he selfishly does not want her to leave. And Fowler wrote to Pyle, lying in the letter that his wife was ready to give a divorce. However, the lie was revealed, and, of course, not without the help of Miss Hay. The American and the Englishman are once again sorting things out.
“The word “love” is used only in the West. People here don’t know painful attractions. You will suffer, Pyle, if you don’t understand this in time,” Fowler cynically declares. He hints at Pyle’s suspicious activities, again tries to explain to him what Phuong really is, but finds himself now “figuring out” her character no worse than Pyle. One day, Phuong does not return home and goes to Pyle.
Fowler is changing, anxiety is gradually growing in him, which he is trying to suppress and drown out. His hatred of an inhumane, unjust war is embodied in his actions: he renounces his neutrality and conducts an investigation into Pyle's activities. The true essence of the “quiet American” is gradually revealed to the reader: with cynical composure he organizes the mass murder of women and children, beneficial to his American “masters”, but he almost faints at the sight of blood and, out of cleanliness, rushes to erase its traces from his immaculately polished shoes. Fowler decides to hand Pyle over to the American partisans, and the “quiet American” is killed.
An idea that illustrates the main idea of the novel is expressed by Fowler’s friend Captain Truen: “We all get involved in something, you just have to give in to the feeling, and then you won’t get out. Both in war and in love, it’s not for nothing that they are always compared.” For love, like for truth, you have to fight. The desire to remain neutral and not stain oneself makes a person look like a “quiet American” wiping blood from his polished shoes.
The artistic originality of Graham Greene's novel is based on the comparison and contrast of the two main characters. The love plot helps to reveal their characters as deeply as possible - the fight for Phuong's heart brought Pyle and Fowler face to face and forced them to reveal their true nature.
Bibliography
Green G. Comedians. - Chisinau, 1982
Foreign literature of the 20th century / Ed. L.G. Andreeva. M., 2003
Ivasheva V. Graham Greene. - In the book: Ivasheva V. The fate of English writers. M., 1989
Lodge D. The Different Lives of Graham Greene. - http://magazines.russ.ru/inostran/2001/12/lodge.html