StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

The Quiet American by Graham Greene - Book Report/Review Example

Cite this document
Summary
It appears that more and more Americans are stereotypically portrayed as unpleasantly edgy by the "cultured" European nations, and that Americans believe that they are absolutely innocent. This might be because of a general European discrimination against the common American citizen…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER95.3% of users find it useful
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "The Quiet American by Graham Greene"

Download file to see previous pages

Graham Greene was not a communist although it is obvious that he had tough feelings with regards to the Americans existence in Vietnam previous to the war and for the duration of the entire clash. Fowler desires to have a life for Phuong together with himself in Vietnam; however Pyle comes into sight, thinking the West distinguishes what's best for Vietnam and prepares to take her back towards America. Graham Greene, creator of The Quiet American, had spent time in Vietnam during the early 1950s documenting on the war.

He considered that America's task to intervene for the French and recover Vietnam from communism was troubled. If American citizens had examined this novel in 1955 and recognized that the story, though fictional, was filled with truth, they might never have forced themselves into that chaos. Obviously, had they the capability to discover from literature, or the olden times, or the aspiration to do such, they would not have been citizens of America. Idealism dissociated from realism, in company with struggling principles at conflict with morality, continues the feature of the American disposition, and no novelist has confined it more intensely than Graham Greene inside this novel.

In the composition of The Quiet American, one of the central characters happens to be Alden Pyle who is inside a continuous competition with the vital character Fowler. They shape an odd connection where they are more connected rather than being friends also they have a sturdy yet not forthright friction with each other. Whether being the heave of battle over Phuong or merely politics on the whole, it appears that Fowler and Pyle seldom agree and are in no way on the same height. Greene tries to fix the American on the inferior level underneath Fowler and struggles to depict him as simply ignorant.

Greene made use of the characters Thomas Fowler along with Alden Pyle to symbolize a better image. In the dealings among these personalities, he is simplifying the circumstances in Vietnam into a personal representation to be observed. Greene urbanized the behaviors as well as the individualities of his characters nearly to be a concentrated legend of the nations they correspond to. Inside their performances, and judgment formed on them by others, has been a manifestation of the wide-ranging feeling generally within Vietnam.

Pyle happens to be a supporter of an American political philosopher named York Harding who has composed books with titles like The Role of the West, The Advance of Red China, as well as The Challenge to Democracy. Fowler declares of Pyle, Democracy has turned out to be another issue of his, and he had asserted and annoying observations on what the United States of America has been doing for the planet. Fowler, as a delegate of the old colonialists, has realized from harsh experience that the world is not considerably flexible, that predicaments are often stubborn, and that certain western concepts, like democracy, are plain mental notions which have no actuality, that is, they do not match up in any means to how the world really functions.

He narrates to Pyle that the citizens of Vietnam are not engrossed with fighting an anti-communist campaign. What they desire is uncomplicated which are sufficient supply of rice, not to be gunned down, and on top of it all they do not desire our white skins around informing them what they would like. After all, they own this country. Alden Pyle was already captivated within the tight

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“The Quiet American by Graham Greene Book Report/Review - 1”, n.d.)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene Book Report/Review - 1. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1530137-the-quiet-american-by-graham-greene
(The Quiet American by Graham Greene Book Report/Review - 1)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene Book Report/Review - 1. https://studentshare.org/literature/1530137-the-quiet-american-by-graham-greene.
“The Quiet American by Graham Greene Book Report/Review - 1”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1530137-the-quiet-american-by-graham-greene.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF The Quiet American by Graham Greene

The Sixties Cultural Movement

It was also a time when America began seeing itself for what it is, their government policies especially their foreign policy was always based on profit and the american people understood that they needed to be more sympathetic to other people.... It was a moment when humanity could re-examine themselves and their lives that society could be changed just like the efforts of the African-american people as a segregated minority.... Even within literature did the american beliefs penetrate there was a naïve impression of american anticommunism....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Historical Criticism of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory

"the quiet american" is set in the Vietnam of the early 50s, "The Heart of the Matter" is set in West Africa, "Our Man in Havana" in Cuba, "The Honorary Consul in Paraguay/Argentina.... graham greene was a Catholic, a traveler and an exile (Lawson).... He was baptized at 21. … His authorized biographer Norman Sherry shows greene being moved by World War I.... In a letter to his mother, greene recounted "the endless memorial services" at the school and the "death feeling" that had pervaded the atmosphere (Sherry 232-240....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Racial Tension and Cultural Encounter

The "fiction" of the quiet american and The Spider's House speaks truth to our current situation more concretely than the grand ideological pronouncements of political scientists or historians.... In the opening scene of the quiet american, Thomas Fowler, the cynical and at times arrogantly self-assured British journalist, is waiting for Alden Pyle to return along with Phuong, a beautiful Vietnamese girl and one-time lover of Fowler.... In hindsight, Samuel Huntington's now prophetic invocation of the "Clash of Civilizations," to explain the current global sociopolitical dynamic in contemporary society, can be seen to have a common intellectual experience with the narratives of cultural encounter by such authors as graham greene and Paul Bowles....
7 Pages (1750 words) Book Report/Review

The Stereotyping of Native Americans within Commerce

The case study "The Stereotyping of Native Americans within Commerce" states that Popular perceptions of what it means to be Indian, or Native american, has been shaped and reinforced by a variety of strategies, some of which have relied on the written word and others on imagery.... ' The american Indian and that which popular culture has determined that he/she represents have been exploited within the context of commerce and commercial advertising for close to a century with the purpose being the purveyance of specified messages regarding the company or the brand in question....
8 Pages (2000 words) Case Study

Women and honor

the quiet american is set against a backdrop of Vietnam during the latter part of the First Indo- China war.... raham greene's narration shifts between the past -of the events leading to Pyle's death and the present reality that exists after the death of Pyle.... greene uses his protagonist Pyle as a CIA operative, to represent America with all its policies in Vietnam.... Unlike Rich's “Women and Honor” where she blatantly speaks the truth, greene does not say which point of view is the truth....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Loneliness Shaping the Characters of the Two Novels in Different Essence

In “the quiet american” Fowler is in conflict with his conscience, his desires for love, his sense of duty to his country, In the sorrowful and bleak context of “the quiet american” and “the Power and the Glory” the theme of loneliness is handled to expose the bare nature of life.... Incontrovertibly the two novels “The Power and the Glory” and “the quiet american” deal with the interactions among politics, religion and common life of human beings, but in the two novels Graham Greene's treatment of ‘loneliness' sets their tone of these interactions on the premise that man is too lonely in his lonely path of life to receive any sympathy from others for his pain and agony....
18 Pages (4500 words) Essay

How was and is the cold war reflected culturally

The cold war is more and more treated as a universal historical era starting in 1950s when the Truman policy sought to hold Leninism and the extension of soviet sway, and finishing with the turn down and descend of the soviet union and the Eastern league in the late 1980s.... The… ra is depicted mainly by rivalry and division between two nuclear-based super-powers and their camps, and by the superpowers' competition for the control or allegiance of the decolonizing world....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

This paper under the title "The Quiet American by Graham Greene" focuses on the character of Alden Pyle who, despite the brilliance and significant achievement being a Harvard University graduate, appears to Thomas Fowler as naïve based upon Pyle's political beliefs.... nbsp;… Through the title Green seemingly places stress on the awaiting irony of the attribute in 'quietness' when the silence and meekness associated to Pyle turn into huge contradiction at the point that marks Vietnam history with a blast of destruction, claiming several innocent lives....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us