The Quiet American

The Quiet American

The Quiet American, a 1955 English novel written by Graham Greene, is by far the most diverse novel that I’ve ever read. It has historical facts, a love story, action and a murder mystery. What’s more interesting is the idea that through out the book we can find ‘innocence’ playing different characters. It represents the lamb and the tiger at the same time, as William Blake would say . Through the novel, the author presents different situations that show us how innocence gets in the way of a friendship, how it takes part of a romance and how it works as a trigger that makes someone make an important decision.

The novel starts with Mr. Fowler, the central character that portraits a middle aged English journalist who covers the Franco-Vietnamese War, and Phuong, his young Vietnamese lover, waiting for their American friend to arrive. Soon, they find out that Pyle, the ‘quiet American’, is death. He has been murdered. The story continues in past tense: the narrator, Fowler, starts remembering how he met Pyle and what were his first impressions of him. The structure of the book goes back and forth between the present and the past; making the novel confusing but intriguing at the same time, it leaves you wanting for more while you are reading it. When Fowler first met Pyle he thought of him as a good fellow, he even felt the urge to protect him. “Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm” . It never crossed Fowler’s mind that maybe there was the possibility that the Third Force, a violent political movement, could influence Pyle, and the American was the only one that didn’t need protection. As the story develops, Fowler started noticing that others are controlling his friend. Pyle’s innocence has made him truly follow General Thé’s ideas and believe in Harding’s philosophy. Thus converting him in someone Fowler can’t fully trust, and making their friendship unstable.

Innocence also plays an important role in the love story that occurs in The Quiet American. Phuong is the mistress that Fowler and Pyle fight for. At the beginning of the novel she is the uneducated Vietnamese girl that shares her life with Mr. Fowler, who has a wife back at home in England. Pyle arrives to their lives and he falls for Phuong, his innocent mind gives him the strength to confront Fowler warning him that he’ll make Phuong choose between them. The protagonist hates to