French Colonialism In The Quiet American

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. " [Nixon]. In order to understand this event, one ultimately needs to examine the cause and every possible perspective of that cause. After World War II, the Vietnamese people anticipated reunification and democracy away from French rule. The Vietnamese were hindered heavily by French colonialism, resulting in the increasing popularity of communist revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh. The Quiet American, a novel by Graham Greene, authentically depicts the position of the Europeans and Americans in Vietnam during the Cold War. Characters throughout the story such as Fowler, a seasoned British journalist and a strong believer in neutrality in Vietnam, and Pyle, a brash young American idealist who is eager to get involved, are symbolic of the mindset of their nations. Although Pyle argues that monolithic expansionary Soviet controlled communism is a major threat to democracy, Fowler’s perspective is more justified because he recognizes that the Vietnamese people’s true motive is nationalistic reunification and understands that Ho Chi Minh is more than just a communist and recognizes him as the enigma he is.
While Pyle believes that the Vietnamese are …show more content…
Through The Quiet American, Greene has shown that sometimes it is not possible to support capitalism and democracy at the same time. Because the Vietnamese democratically decided to not use capitalism, it made it impossible to have both. The most important thing for a government to have is democracy, because it is supposed to aid the needs of it’s people. Nixon was right about the war being misunderstood, but Fowler is one of the few who understood it before it even