Relationships In Graham Greene's The Quiet American
In Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” how does he compare War with Relationships?
In the novel, “The Quiet American,” Greene portrays the plot whilst using common war elements like colonialism and plastic explosives to decisively display the relationships between the story’s characters. In particular, with Fowler and Pyle. Three main elements are what drives these two characters apart over time, in the novel; their Colonialist views, Pyle’s lies about plastics and their shared love with Phuong.
Greene explores the ethics of Western involvement in Vietnam through the thoughts and ideals of the story’s protagonist, Thomas Fowler. Fowler believes in an open-minded view of how destructive colonialism can be, whilst Pyle follows the ideology
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Greene’s display of this theme is the most noticeable out of the three elements displayed, but to Fowler it was less of a concern in comparison to what Pyle had achieved at the end of the story. Fowler and Phuong both have more realistic, even mundane, understandings of love than Pyle. Fowler believes love is “companionship in old age,” as well as “sexual gratification.” These two ideas were mostly foreign to Pyle as he had little sex experience as well as being absent towards long-term dating. Fowler also believes that love is for “financial security” because of material reasons associated with comfort making life more bearable. Pyle’s ideas about love can be called romantic because they impose ideals onto individuals, rather than starting with the individual and their particular circumstance. Pyle falls in love with Phuong partly because he sees it as an opportunity to help a person, which mirrors on a small scale his desire to help the Vietnamese nation as a whole. Fowler refers to Pyle’s love as a ‘dollar love’ that has ‘good intentions, a clear conscience, and to Hell with everybody.’ Which was the exact way which Pyle dealt with the “Third Force”
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