ipl-logo

Examples Of Traditionalism In The Quiet American

965 Words4 Pages

The Quiet American written by Graham Greene takes place in the 1950’s. A time period of the French Indochina war in Southern Asia, The Korean and Vietnam War. The French empire is trying to colonize the Indochina region which was an Anti-imperialist country at this time. China is fighting for their independence, Korea is in a civil war to pose a threat to communism. The central character, is Thomas Fowler, he is posed as the dull, delightful, and bright narrator of The Quiet American and displays traditionalism throughout his viewpoints on the world. He is wedded to a woman named Helen in England but currently they are separated at the moment due to work. During Fowlers period in Vietnam he takes act in a immodest sexual circumstances with a …show more content…

Unlike most young people, Pyle acquires his knowledge from books and not life experiences and therefore he is seen as blind when it comes to thinking in a skeptical manner. Alden Pyle and Fowler both have an affair at the same time with a woman named Phuong. However, Pyle is the soon to be husband of Phuong. Phuong is a local Vietnamese young woman who has a soft demeanor and keeps to herself. Her romantic relations lead to her being referred to as a prostitute. Although she is the object of desire to two men, nonetheless she hardly ever voices for herself and repeatedly permits other people to speak for her. It was concluded that Alden Pyle was no longer living and there is no mark to determine the assassinator, leaving his death a mystery to be solved by the audience. The conscious conflict and symbolism throughout the The Quiet American is the epitome of the contentious global political climate during the Cold War. Each of the three characters Fowler, Pyle and Phuong symbolize the rigid dichotomy of the world-wide atmosphere during the Cold War through their representation of Capitalist ideology, Communism, and The Vietnam silence (Complacency)

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Losing An American Tradition By Charles M. Young

    691 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article “Losing: An American Tradition” the author Charles M. Young argues that there is no such thing as a gracious winner: when a person wins, they receive praise, and praise inevitably leads to an egotistical person. Young also argues that thriving as a loser is shameless: if you are still considered an underdog, but everyone can see that you are trying your hardest, then technically you are winning as a loser and shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Young’s first altercation is that Americans hate losing. He supports this by saying, “Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Hiroshima In Americ Fifty Years Of Denial By Greg Mitchell

    110 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novel, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell wrote a novel analysing the second thoughts of the American people and government’s handling of the Hiroshima’s bombing. The novel also contained the perspective of President Harry S. Truman and his thought processes as America comes to the end of war. Lifton and Mitchell also focused on the half century that followed. The novel showed how the decisions such as the one to drop the atomic bomb can disrupt a nation 's narrative, and how secrecy, concealment, and falsification can be employed to smooth over such disruptions in an effort to reaffirm the logical thinking.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Cultural Trends In The American Colonies

    673 Words  | 3 Pages

    Cultural trends Religions in the colonies were diverse than anywhere else in the western world. The American colonists willing to accept religious differences. Although, the American Revolution marked a new beginning for the colonies, however not all colonists support the idea of declaring independence from Britain. The colonists were split into three groups. The first group is the patriots, this group defends the right of Americans and against monarchy.

    Read More

  • Ceremony: The Persistence Of Native American Culture

    397 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main message about the culture that was portrayed in the book titled Ceremony was about the persistence of Native American culture to evolve the ceremony traditions in order to adapt to the changing environment and heal Tayo’s illness from the World War II. This was demonstrated by Ku’oosh, who was a medicine man, discovers that he can no longer cure Tayo of his sickness due to only his knowledge in traditional ceremony practices. He then sends Tayo to another medicine man known as Betonie, who can cure him of his sickness due to his ability to adapt and modify a ceremony tradition to meet the demands of Tayo’s new generation. However, Tayo learns that the ceremony can only be completed once he was able to encompass elements of the Native

    Read More

  • Super Sad True Love Story Analysis

    719 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although much of Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story revolves around the relationship between Lenny and Eunice, there is a clear, overarching theme. Despite the great debt to China, America is still the powerhouse it is known to be in reality and in the novel. Rubenstein is well-aware of the attractiveness of the country, through its endless cultural

    Read More

  • Elements Of American Exceptionalism

    956 Words  | 4 Pages

    Nadine Sia SOC-1 Professor Thompson November 10th, 2015 You Just Don’t Understand This article was about the difference between how men and women perceive conversation. He opens up with a conversation that both parties took very differently than the other. He then goes on to explain more differences, such as status vs. support, independence vs. intimacy, advice vs. understanding, etc.

    Read More

  • Comparing An American Childhood And The Great Gatsby

    140 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novels, An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard, and The Great Gatsby, by Francis S. Fitzgerald, both set in the US. An American Childhood is fixed in Pittsburgh during the 1950s following a child’s lower-middle class upbringing while The Great Gatsby takes place on Long Island and throughout New York City throughout the early 1920s watches a great number of “main” characters in a drama surrounding a secret love between a certain Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. In both of these novel’s, any newcomer to the US would see multiple similar examples in general topics such as gender roles, the class system and corruption that portrays a very different upbringing style from other countries. However, even though the books were set long ago, the

    Read More

  • Culture In America During The 1980's

    353 Words  | 2 Pages

    Culture in America during the 1980s was signified by a social and political conservatism. Conservatism is the” domination of society by an aristocracy (Stanford University).” The apex of American conservatism in the last half of the twentieth century was Ronald Reagan's victory in the presidential election. During Reagan's time as chief executive, he tried to get rid of the welfare State Act. He also wanted to shrink the federal government.

    Read More

  • American Ignorance In Graham Greene's The Quiet American

    425 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Fowler is more justified as portrayed through Greene’s themes of American ignorance, and the views of the Vietnamese. While Pyle claims to want to protect Vietnam, Fowler understands that American intervention is not sustainable due to the lack of interest the Vietnamese people show towards a central government. When Fowler is discussing the Vietnamese viewpoint to Pyle, he explains that, “They want enough rice... they don’t want to be shot at”(Greene 86). Fowler’s statement to Pyle claiming that “they don’t want to be shot at” is an allusion to what American intervention could do to the Vietnamese people; the Americans would be the force that kills the Vietnamese if they were to intervene, not the people

    Read More

  • The Quiet American Involvement In Vietnam War

    1029 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s note to the Department of State Bulletin in 1950, America is urged to recognize that the “solution of the Indochina problem depends both upon the restoration of security [through the Third Force led by Diem] and upon the development of genuine nationalism” (Sponsoring). “Restoration” and “development” are words that imply a lack of stability which reveals Dean Acheson’s bias that undermines the credibility of his notes with his condescending statements to Vietnam that parallel with American arrogance in Vietnam because Americans misunderstood the situation in Vietnam. Although one may argue that America is trying to achieve a desirable solution for Vietnam through the Third Force, the means are not justified because they completely ignore the Vietnamese natives in the South, which parallels with Pyle’s actions with the Third Force in the South that ultimately harmed more than it helped. In the novel, after a bomb blows up in a parade and kills dozens of Vietnamese civilians, Fowler realizes that Pyle had scheduled the massacre. Furious, Fowler asks Pyle, “How many dead colonels justify a child’s or a trishaw driver’s death when you are building a democratic front?”

    Read More

  • Native American Social Realism

    1514 Words  | 7 Pages

    Sherman Alexie’s Literary Works as Native American Social Realistic Senior Lecturer (Full-time), Department of English, IBAIS University, Bangladesh Research Associate (Part-time), Uttara University, Bangladesh E-mail:amir.hossain.16578@gmail.com/ amir.ju09@yahoo.com This paper aims to look at the social realistic issues in the context of Sherman Alexie’s literary works.

    Read More

  • Grandfather Sky: How American Indian Lifestyle Differences

    496 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the majority of the American Indian population living in urban environments instead of on reservation lands, American Indian youth and adolescence often struggle with understanding their personal identity. The 1993 film Grandfather Sky follows the story of a young Navajo teenager named Charlie who is sent to live on the reservation with his uncle Ben after being arrested several times in his hometown of Denver, Colorado. Charlie’s experiences illustrate the major lifestyle differences between living in an urban city and on traditional reservation lands and make clear the effects that these lifestyle factors have on the overall wellbeing of American Indian youth. As the beginning scenes of Grandfather Sky suggest, while living in the city, Charlie was largely unaccepted and misunderstood due to the color of his skin and his cultural association.

    Read More

  • Europeans In The Quiet American

    255 Words  | 2 Pages

    The distinction in which Americans and Europeans are portrayed in the movie The Quiet American is very evident. The United States is often seen as a young and vital country with much less history than the European continent. In the movie this distinction is depicted by Thomas Fowler, a British journalist and Alden Pyle, a young American in Vietnam who represents the United States. Fowler is an older man, he learned from his mistakes and cannot pick a side in war torn Vietnam, while Pyle is young and full of energy and courage as can be deducted by the scene in which he went to Phat Diem in a boat and nearly got shot.

    Read More

  • The Quiet American Research Paper

    721 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Quiet American is a spy and war novel, written in the mid 1950-s. It’s a novel about possession, murder, obsession and politics. It was first published in December 1955. It is a four-part drama that is written in circular narrative. This novel takes us on a journey in French IndoChina, precisely in Saigon,Vietnam, a site of a rising local insurgency against the French colonial rule.

    Read More

  • Introduction To American Literature

    1071 Words  | 5 Pages

    1. Introduction to general literature : Literature is a cluster of verbal works, written, or oral, interrelated by subject-matter, by language or place of origin, or by prevailing cultural values. According to Boris Pasternak, ‘Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.’ Even in ancient times, scholars, critics and teachers of the literature have recognized that narrative – story telling which forms a necessary aspect of the novel began in every corner of the world at a very early point in the development of civilization. (Columbia history of American novel) 2.

    Read More

More about Examples Of Traditionalism In The Quiet American

Open Document