The Quiet American

In Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Greene uses the characters Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle to represent a greater picture. In the interactions among these characters, he is simplifying the situation in Vietnam into a personal model to be viewed. Graham Greene developed the attitudes and personalities of his characters almost to be a condensed legend of the countries they represented. In their actions, and opinions formed on them by others, was a reflection of …

… the war. Green may have pointed out some kind of dissention between England and the United States with the love triangle set up between the two and Phuong. Greene subtly and deftly intertwines the lives of his characters with their larger counterparts. Are they both trying to help Vietnam? Or are they simply meddling in affairs that don't concern them. In the end Pyle ended up dead. A grisly foreboding of things to come?