Graham Greene is not, basically, a political writer but a writer who happens to be about politics in his later period of his novelistic career. In The Quiet American, he formed a political imagination that is based on both America and American policies involving colonial prestige. This paper conveys an overall representation that he dislikes America because it is a symbol of all that has gone wrong due to materialism, Godlessness and neutrality.
Like so many of Greene's novels, The Quiet American was inspired by his personal experience of a particular part of the world. He translated into the novel his experiences as the Indo-China correspondent of Life and the London Sunday Times in the fifties. Greene said in a B.B.C. talk:
"And, of course, there is no coincidence about Indo-China. I went there because there was a war on and I stayed there every winter for four years to watch a war. And out of that a novel emerged. I suppose it's a relic of one's old journalistic past, but I see no reason why the novel to-day shouldn't be written with a background of world events, just as a novel in the nineteenth century could be based entirely on a long experience of Warwickshire or Dorsetshire."1 When Greene's novel was eventually noticed in the New Yorker, Greene says in Ways of Escape, "The reviewer condemned me for accusing my ‘best friends’ (The Americans) of murder, since I had attributed to them the responsibility for the great explosion―far worse than the trivial bicycle bombs―in the main square of Saigon when many people lost their lives."2
Critics innocently struggled to explain Greene's emergence as a left-wing political novelist. The Soviets were easily misled into thinking that his anti-Americanism meant that he was sympatheti...
... middle of paper ...
... Graham Greene, The Quiet American (Delhi: Surjeet Publications, 2007), p. 199.
Hereafter, the novel with page numbers is noted parenthetically.
8. Frederick J Hoffman, The Mortal No.: Death and the Modern Imagination
(Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 381.
9. John Atkins, Graham Greene, p. 231.
10. Maurice Cranston, The Listener (22 December 1955) p. 1097.
11. Conor Cruise O'Brien, The New Statesman and Nation (10 December 1955) p.
804.
12. A.A De Vitis, Graham Greene (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964), p. 118.
13. Grahame Smith, The Achievement of Graham Greene (Great Britain: The
Harvester Press, 1986), p. 134.
14. Michael Sheldon, Graham Greene: The Man Within, pp. 402-403.
15. Judith Adamson, Graham Greene: The Dangerous Edge (New York: Palgrave,
2001), pp. 118-119.
16. Graham Greene, Ways of Escape, p. 138.
Lipsky, D. (2004). Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point. New York: Vintage Books Press.
20th Century American Literature: A Soviet View. Translated by Ronald Vroon, p. 78. Progress Publishers. 1976. The. 241-260.
Philip Noyce's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American to film was a large success. It stayed true to the script, and kept the basic essence of the characters; pulling them from the pages of the book and creating them visually into marvels on screen. The earlier film made on the book was made in 1958 by Joseph Mankiewicz. Fowler was played by Michael Redgrave, with Audie Murphy as Pyle. This version was forced to reverse Greene's political stand taken in the book however, meaning it had no-where near as much impact as Noyce's production. Noyce chose to film in actual Vietnamese locations and without compromise, boldly sticking to the novel by not letting the Americans come out of the story too kindly. The Vietnamese conflict-its roots, effects, and lifestyle was captured brilliantly with Brendan Fraser depicting the deceivingly innocent yet devious Pyle, and Michael Caine as Fowler the ageing and unhappy journalist.
In each of the authors essays in this book, is the truth of the smut and other things of the American ideal. You could say it is a liitle bit Weber's Protestant Ethic meets Larry Flynt. In each scenario, whether through agricultural facility and personal liberties, in the case of marijuana criminalization; immigrants in search of a better life, in the case of stigmatized farm workers; or punishing a successful businessman because of his lack of morals, Eric Schlosser returns to the unpleasant image of America as a bundle of hypocrisies.
...nd: A Study of the American Novel in the Nineteen-Sixties. Yale, 1973. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale,1975.
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
Defining the American character is quite difficult because American identity is vaguely founded on shared values and ideologies, more so than a particular creed, race, or culture. In order to describe the American character, we will consider the dominate and distinctive qualities of Americans as interpreted by J. Hector St. Jon De Crèvecoeur and Thomas Paine. First, we will examine how Crèvecoeur illustrates Americans as industrious, prideful, and political in “Letters from an American Farmer.” Then, we will analyze from Thomas Paine's “Common Sense” how he depicts the prevalent qualities of Americans to be driven by justice, liberty, emotions, and individualism. Also, because both authors consider the American character and culture different
After a close analysis of “America” by Tony Hoagland, the poem warns and points out the problems with our consumerism. Hoagland uses metaphors and imagery to describe the actions of American, while throwing in counteracting themes. And uses thoughts and dreams to bring in metaphors that complex the poem.
Frank, America’s mother, Browning and the whole system are responsible for all the negative impact on America. First, America’s mother forced America to suffer by deserting him with his brothers. Second, Browning deliberately uses America for the purposes of achieving his immoral ambitions. Finally, the system is guilty for backing away from America when he needed the system the most. The novel shows the reader that how America lost his ability to trust someone ever again and how after a lot of struggles and pain, how he was able to gain that belief to ever trust someone once again. After reading this novel, people should acknowledge the fact that, these are individuals who have gone through a lot of pain either emotionally or mentally and it is not easy for them to recover and be able to live a normal life once again. So in order to avoid turning someone into America, people should always there prior attention to these people and help them to be able to come out of their fears and to be able to live happily once
1-) In what ways is this novel and American classic? What do you believe it says about American values and ideals?
Green uses various literary elements, a few symbolic scenes, constant visual action along with the clever use of “action-reaction” format to let the text flow hence creating potential tension to make sure that the story isn’t dead at any point. The action is mentioned and the protagonist’s immediate reaction keeps the reader involved and complements each other heavily. Green drags the reader right into the text from the very beginning, and very skilfully keeps the reader engaged to the end of the introduction. With varied techniques to convey his message, Green is able to summarize the novel and grab attention in the few opening pages itself.
“American Crisis.” The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill 2009. Print
freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building” (Edward Snowden). Before WW2, communism became a colossal concern due to the idea that various people were aiming more on what countries they wanted to colonize. Later after the war, from 1945-1964, the Vietnamese expanded Southward expecting to reach the Mekong River Delta. As a result of their movement, the Vietnamese absorbed French influence established upon choice and freedom to individuals. France was preferential where as the U.S. Was pushed further away because the French recognized the democratic republic of Vietnam (DMV) as a free state. In the novel The Quiet American, by Graham Greene, Thomas Fowler, a British journalist, meets an American CIA agent named Alden Pyle who is always reading books by York Harding. Pyle's opinions are based on Harding’s beliefs that a Third Force, a country that interferes with two fighting nations to help reach a settlement, is the best way to help Vietnam out of Communism. Both Fowler and Pyle battle over a women named Phuong, wanting what is best for her and the rest of Vietnam. While Fowler wants nonintervention, Pyle wants to do the complete opposite. In the novel The Quiet American, Pyle believes he has to bring in a Third Force to stop communism which became a threat to the Vietnamese when in contrast, Fowler is more justified because he interpreted the main conflict of the Third Force and the view of the Vietnamese people.
via, Prentice Hall Literature: The American Experience. Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Pearson, 2010. 1126-233. Print.
The purpose of this essay is to examine how the two modernist writers depict America in the 1920’s in a state of moral decay and the pursuit for material wealth gradually replaces the purity of conventional moral ideals and beliefs in their ways by comparing and contrasting the two novels.