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The Quiet American

As an Iranian female, I read Graham GreeneÆs (2004) The Quiet American with shock and awe. Though the adventures of Alden Pyle in Saigon of the 1950s is the topic and focus of GreeneÆs novel, I was amazed and shocked at the similarities to American intervention in the Middle East in contemporary times. PyleÆs mission in Asia is to ôimproveö things, to spread democracy, and to stop the spread of anti-democratic regimes, (Greene, 2004, p. 13). This mission is eerily close if not identical to U.S. intervention in Iraq. However, Pyle will die in his mission to finance the spread of democracy in Asia, primarily from his ignorance of the country and its people which leads to strategies that are better for them than neither communism or colonialism.

Though the recent Harvard graduate Alden Pyle arrives in Saigon in order to ôimproveö things and ôto do good,ö he remains blind to the nature of Vietnam and its people and culture, (Greene, 2004, p. 13). Though he thinks he can do good for the country and the world by spreading Christian, democratic (i.e. Western) values and institutions, Pyle never really comes to see Vietnam and its people as an ôinsider.ö Though he is viewed as a ôquiet American,ö in reality, we are told he will never experience Vietnam in the way the Vietnamese do. Pyle ignores the ôreal background that held you as a smell does: the gold of the rice-fields under a flat late sun: the fishersÆ fragile cranes hovering over the fields like mosquitoesö the cups of tea on an old abbotÆs platformàthe mollusk hats of the girls repairing the road when a mine had burst: the gold and the young green and the bright dresses of the southàand the circle of enemy mountains and the drone of planesö (Greene, 2004, p. 23).

Like America is trying tn prevent the spread of communist and anti-American regimes in the Middle-East, so Pyle is in Saigon to prevent both the spread of commun

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The Quiet American. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:29, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710199.html