The Quiet American
The film The Quiet American takes place during the 1950’s in Vietnam. The movie illustrates the atmosphere of Vietnam previous to the Vietnam War and during the French occupation of the country. The main plot of the movie revolves around three characters: Fowler played by Michael Caine, Pyle played by Brendan Fraiser, and Phoung played by Do Thi Hai Yen. For the duration of the movie the three main characters are involved in a semi love triangle. This triangle and the emotions that the male characters feel towards Phoung begin to characterize the way they feel about the country of Vietnam itself. Vietnam becomes feminized, taboo, and sexualized just as Phoung does in Pyle and Fowler’s eyes. The manner in
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Pyle doesn’t love Vietnam so much as he hates communism, in the same way he doesn’t love Phoung so much as he does not want Fowler to have her. Fowler on the other hand walks a thin line between noninvolvement and participation within the situations at hand. Fowler believes that Vietnam should be left to make its own decisions, but at the same time he is afraid of the consequences of such choices. This policy of noninvolvement and noncommittal is the same way that he approaches all the situations within his life. Fowler does not want to become concerned with the circumstances occurring in Vietnam and he also does not wholeheartedly become involved in the situation between Pyle and Phoung until he is forced to do so. He essentially permits Phoung to decide whom she wants to be with until he is compelled to leave his state of neutrality when it does not seem as if he will become the winner of her heart. Yet again Fowler’s feelings towards Phoung embody his feelings towards Vietnam. Fowler wanted to give Phoung a chance to make her own decisions until he becomes petrified that she will choose the stability of Pyle rather than himself. In a similar way, Fowler believed that Vietnam should be able to choose what would occur in its own future but he was afraid at the same time that they would make the wrong decision and elect a communist leader. Although Phoung’s embodiment of Vietnam is the major
Of crucial importance is the different attitudes between Nguyen and Quang has towards the Vietnam War. Nguyen represents the traditional view that the Vietnam War was a failure on the part of the Americans, a mistake and pointless war that ruined the lives of many. What is surprising is Quang’s view. With an immediate and loud retort to Nguyen’s negative feelings towards the Vietnam war, Seol’s portrayal of Quang immediately grabs the audience’s attention. Quang is grateful for the Vietnam war, and “thankful for the American soldiers that gave up their lives so [he] could live.” Actor Seol aptly captures the spirit and sentiments of an actual Vietnamese refugee, and in doing so provides a refreshing and different perspective about the Vietnam War. Faced with these differing perspectives, the audience must come to realize that America is not a monolith, but instead composed of people from many different backgrounds with varying experiences, attitudes, thoughts, and
The final theme I notice between Tim O’Brien and the Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam videos is the blame or guilt every soldier felt between things going wrong on missions or losing their friends. In “The Things They Carried”, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross takes the blame for the death of his soldier Ted Levander. In the story it states “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war”. Lt. Jimmy Cross often caught himself dreaming about a girl he loved to escape the war. He possibly thought about her too much which is why he took the blame. But in all reality, Lavender was shot while using the bathroom and that’s that. The only blame for that would be the war itself. In the video 60 Minutes: “My Lai Massacre”, a report on a very brutal attack on a Vietnamese village by U.S Soldiers, Hugh Thomson is a hero for saving many Vietnamese civilians from an awful fate. More than 150 women and children were marched
The reports in this novel are prefaced with a quote by Robert Shaplen, which sums up the feelings of those Americans involved in the Vietnam conflict. He states, "Vietnam, Vietnam . . .. There are no sure answers." In this novel, the author gives a detailed historical account of the happenings in Vietnam between 1950 and 1975. He successfully reports the confusing nature, proximity to the present and the emotions that still surround the conflict in Vietnam. In his journey through the years that America was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Herring "seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in such a way as to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam."
Vietnam made a big portion of history also through its use of slang and war specified language. This language came about through many means including its adaption to the Vietnamese language, coded words, phrases, profanity and initials that represent war objects, and other means, and to represent or even hide their emotional stand points. On page 19, O'Brien describes the young soldiers as actors. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. On page 12, Lieutenant describes his feelings for Martha as dense, crushing love. He then explains how he wants to sleep inside her lungs, breathe her blood, amd be smothered. This sounds like extremely harsh description for love. However, the soldier's environment became the most they could relate to. For example, to describe the death of a soldier, they'd used phrases such as "Boom. Down. Like Cement," or "flat fuck fell." O'Brien explains how the soldiers would make conscious efforts to joke about things and make comical references to have themselves laugh. Page 19 describes that they used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. At the end of page 18 and beginning of page 19, we find that the men would now and then panic and have the desire to cry out for the misery to stop. They'd make unguaranteed promises to God and their parents in hope that that would be their source of survival. On page 11 O'Brien tells that the Imagination was a
The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.
There are two distinctly different and contradictory societies in Vietnam: Saigon and the rest. “Saigon and Vietnam are as different, almost literally, as night and day.” (para. 6)
In The Quiet American, Phuong’s character is seen but not heard. Unlike Adah, it is unknown if she had a supportive father in her life. At the start of the novel, Phuong is introduced as Thomas Fowler’s lover; an English reporter living in Vietnam. “I shut my eyes and she was again what she used to be: she was the his of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest” (Greene 4). In this quote Phuong is being reduced to the sexual pleasure she once gave Thomas Fowler.
The mere country of Vietnam has the power to change those within its premises. Despite its changing nature, like a drug, it makes people come back wanting more. O’brien makes the comparison to show to his audiences to what extent war changes people. They have come to see war as a norm in their everyday life, becoming dependent on it. And like a drug, if not taken regularly, can experience a withdraw that causes them pain and can change them completely.
Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War is a contrapuntal reading to American literature on the Vietnam War. But rather than stand in stark contrast to Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War is strangely similar, yet different at the same time. From a post-colonialist standpoint, one must take in account both works to get an accurate image of the war. The Sorrow of War is an excellent counterpoint because it is truthful. Tim O' Brien writes: ". . . you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." (O' Brien, 42) Bao Ninh succeeds in this respect. And it was for this reason that the Vietnamese
Phuong is treated like an object to be won by the men in The Quiet American. Both Fowler and Pyle fight for her affections, without truly understanding her. Pyle sees Phuong as being an innocent, delicate victim that needs to be saved from Fowler who he believes is taking her for granted. “That night I woke from one of those short deep opium sleeps, ten minutes long, that seem a whole night’s rest, and found my hand where it had always lain at night, between her legs. She was asleep and I
Pyle comes to Vietnam as a man trying to fight an unbeatable war, but ends up fighting another battle that eventually ends up costing him his life. From the first time he ever laid eyes on Phuong, he instantly fell in love: but unfortunately she already had a man. That didn’t stop him from trying and he kept trying until he got what he wanted, even though it took a long time. The one advantage he had over Fowler is that Phuong’s sister preferred Pyle.
It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.
He is the perfect gentlemen, has money, and a good future. Pyle was “a very quiet American”(17). Only he does possess one flaw, he is an assassin. He aids in the making of bombs and helps with the actual bombing of areas. He was responsible for the bomb that killed several women and children in the town square and all he could think about was the fact that he had to clean the blood off of his shoes before he met with the Minister. He represented America, in that he pretended to stay out of the situation, and simply be a “good guy”, but in reality was extremely involved. Much like the US was not actually fighting, but helping France economically to fight instead, and wasn’t publicly in the war until the 60's but was most likely involved earlier than that.
How long can you sit on the fence and not get involved? How long before you're forced to choose sides? Thomas Fowler learns the answers to this dilemma the hard way.
Themes in each of the novels differ in their impact on the reader similarly as a result of Orwell’s transition into a more politically motivated subject material. Although some focus is spent on British Imperialism in Burmese Days, it is insufficient to determine the overall focus of the novel, as significant amounts of text are also spent on anti-feminism and inferiority of the natives (Patai 867). In his description of the deceased mother of Flory’s love interest, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Orwell writes “After messing about for years with such things as Women’s Suffrage…” (Burmese Days 89). This and the general disrespectful attitude of the white men of the club toward women, both native and British, detracts and distracts from Orwell’s intent to write literature that opposes British