[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on
Taking Sides in the Quiet American
Graham Greene was a great novelist of a special kind. Unlike many literary practitioners in this century, he did not experiment with language, subvert traditional narrative, or choose exotic subjects. He simply used the powerful imagination that led him to speak of his work as a "guided dream." That imagination—fired, at least during the great middle years, by intense moral and religious perception—made Greene’s fiction the best-realized portrayal in its time of the drama of the human soul.
Mr. Greene is a story-teller of genius. Born in another age, he would still be spinning yarns...His technical mastery has never been better manifested than in his statement of the scene -- the sweat and infection, the ill-built town which is beautiful for a few minutes at sundown, the brothel where all men are equal, the vultures...the snobbery of the second-class public schools, the law which all can evade, the ever-present haunting underworld of gossip, spying, bribery, violence and betrayal...the affinity to the film is everywhere apparent. It is the camera's eye which moves from the hotel balcony to the street below, picks out the policeman, follows him to his office, moves about the room from the handcuffs on the wall to the broken rosary in the drawer, recording significant detail. It is the modern way of telling a story.
In Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Greene uses the characters Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle to represent a greater picture. In the interactions among these characters, he is simplifying the situation in Vietnam into a personal model to be viewed. Graham Greene developed the attitudes and personalities of his characters almost to be a condensed legend of the countries they represented. In their actions, and opinions formed on them by others, was a reflection of the general feeling overall in Vietnam. Alden Pyle is the title quiet American sent to Vietnam with orders....
