The warm summer breeze lifts your hair from the nape of your neck. The tree’s leafs rustle above your head, as you sit at the foot of their tree. The edge of the pages from your latest fiction novel flicker as you hold the page down to continue your viewing of the world their author has created for you to read. You smile when the protagonist has a small victory, cry when they fail, and even laugh out loud to the jokes they tell. You are in the world made up just for you; you are in a land of fiction.
What most readers don’t realize is that this world that was created just for you, may actually have some truth behind its pretend exterior. The author of that wonderful master piece may in fact had some of the character traits of the protagonist, had a friend tell them the very same joke that graced your eyes earlier, or even had a relationship that mimics the love affair of the protagonist and his significant other. These seemingly small references to the author sometimes give an individual with a glance into their seemingly untold life. Many scholars classify Graham Greene as one of these authors that slips small autobiographical details into his characters, in each of his books. In The Quiet American his readers find a deep underlying connection between Greene and his character Thomas Fowler. Through reading the novel one can see paralleling traits such as a liking to alcohol, their line of work, cheating on their wife, and even a glance of how these things make them human. In this paper I will give a brief analysis of Graham Greene’s life, then approach the similarities of Greene and Fowler, and close on how their choices make them, in fact, human.
The author who we know to be Graham Greene is actually named Henry Grah...
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...es he made throughout his life. Next time you are sitting reading one of his novels, while the cool breeze dances on the pages of your book, and while your smiling when the protagonist has a small victory, crying when they fail, and even laughing out loud to the jokes they tell. You can remember that the characters that the author has created for you reading, may be more than just a made up individual, and just maybe provide a small glimpse into the life of the author who created him.
Works Cited
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Sinyard, Neil. Graham Greene: A Literary Life (Literary Lives). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.
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“Fiction is the truth inside the lie” (Stephen King). Figment of imagination helps improve brain connectivity and responsibilities which enables the brain to escape to a world of illusion. In a world of imagination students explore conflicts within the book. Anecdotes play a significant role in building the strategies used to deal with real world events. Ink and Ashes by Valynne E. Maetani, discusses how mistakes from the past has an impact on your life and may alter your future. Books intended to be read so that we as people can have a different mindset and perspective on things rather than just our own.
War, love, race, and the meaning of life all play huge roles in The Quiet American by Graham Greene and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. The depiction of Americans intertwined with the themes of war, love, race, and the meaning of life are quite similar, but at the same time very different. In Greene’s novel the depiction of Americans is seen through Alden Pyle who is young, inexperienced, naive, and careless. Alternatively Hemingway’s American character Robert Jordan is Pyle’s complete opposite being that he’s experienced and aware of the actions he does. Whereas Pyle fights against the native people; Jordan fights among the people. While both novels portray a similar idea of American 's self-righteous duty, through these two characters
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...s work was always rich and full of details, complex contradictions. He appreciated everyone in his years of life. His most favorite thing while writing books and essays and poetry was using words to force his readers to rethink their own lives and obstacles creatively. He always spent his life rethinking his past and future actions, thoughts, asking questions to get a better understanding of concepts. He loved to look to nature for greater intensity and meaning for his life.
"Oliver Stone." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2013): 1. Literary Reference Center. Web. 09 Dec. 2013
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Greene’s theme is to elaborate on the paradoxical dangers that Pyle expresses through innocence, idealism and ignorance. Howard Zinn and James Carroll explore the same paradoxical dangers in their works about American exceptionalism. Alden Pyle is one of the main characters in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. He is an American who has an assignment with the Economic Aid Mission in Vietnam.
Fiction stories are those stories not true or factual and are created by the author. These stories are imagined by the author and narrated to the reader. The reader has the opportunity to add their own imagination to the story to make the reading even more enjoyable. Fiction relies on the imagination of the author and the imagination of the reader along with the elements of fiction. Fiction readings are in the form of realistic and non-realistic. When discussing these two types of fiction readings two stories come to mind. The realistic story that comes to mind is the story of “A & P” by John Updike. John Updike is “…considered one of the best of American writers of fiction and poetry” and his story of “A & P” proves to be an ideal example of fiction (V., and Zweig 370). The non-realistic story is “The Fox and the Grapes”, which is found in Aesop’s Fables. Both of these narratives contain elements of fiction easily identified and therefore entertaining to discuss. Characters and point of view are two of the elements of fiction found in these two short stories. Discussion of these two elements, expand on the knowledge of fiction stories through examples and definitions.
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Evans, Robert C., Anne C. Little, and Barbara Wiedemann. Short Fiction: A Critical Companion. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1997. 265-270.