In his junior year at UC Berkeley, Viet managed to get into Professor David Lloyd’s English senior thesis class on colonialism and postcolonialism. He wrote his thesis on Graham Greene’s influential novel The Quiet American, applying O. Mannoni’s Prospero and Caliban and Edward Said’s Orientalism. This was one of his first serious attempts to work with literary theory and long close reading, written when he was nineteen.
Introduction
It was quite by chance that I fell in love with Indochina….I drained a magic
potion, a loving cup which I have shared since with many retired colons and
officers of the Foreign Legion whose eyes light up at the mention of Saigon
and Hanoi. The spell was first cast, I think, by the tall elegant girls in white
silk trousers, by the pewter evening light on flat paddy fields…above all by that feeling of exhilaration which a measure of danger brings to the visitor with a return ticket: the
restaurants wired against grenades, the watchtowers striding along the roads.
(Greene, 160-161)
In 1951, Graham Greene visited what was then called Indochina for the first time,
and recorded his experience thirty years later in Ways of Escape. Comparing the
above passage from Ways of Escape and the novel The Quiet American, we can
see how much Greene’s intoxicating experience with Vietnam influenced his
portrayal of Fowler, the cynical, aging and “uninvolved” reporter who is the first
person narrator of The Quiet American. Fowler has found his longed-for-
paradise in the nightspots of Hanoi and the rice paddies of the deltas, away from
the troubles of civilized and uncertain England. His life in Vietnam–staid, calm, and
comfortable, seemingly unchanging like the “Orient” itself–is disrupted by the first
sign of American neocolonialism, in the form of Pyle, an aide with the American
Economic Mission, whose real mission is to build a “Third Force” to sway the balance
of power. Pyle’s arrival signals an element of change in both the political life of
Vietnam and the personal life of Fowler. America will eventually beome that third
power in French colonial Vietnam, while Pyle becomes the third person in the
newly formed love triangle involving himself, Fowler and Phuong, Fowler’s
mistress. Fowler has left England to avoid uncertainty, and in Vietnam, has
adopted a philosophy of non-involvement. A reporter, he only observes. With
the arrival of Pyle, Fowler’s life is again cast into uncertainty, and he is force to react, to get involved
again with human life, responsibility and commitment.
The relationship between Fowler, Pyle, and Phuong is not so important as a
romantic interest, because there is very little “romantic” about it. Rather, it serves its
main purpose by being an allegory about the international and national forces in
Vietnam. For the postcolonial reader, however, an added dimension comes into play:
that of the dynamics between the cultures of the “West” and the cultures of the
“East”. The standard interpretation of The Quiet American can be recast, by
recognizing some aspects of Fowler and Pyle’s psyches that they themselves have
never been aware of. For Pyle, the examination is rather simplistic, for Pyle as a
character is rather simplistic: “Everything about [Pyle] smacks of old family
American Puritanism….His loyalty to Indochina consists of nothing more than
mere American self-interest, unimaginative and banal” (Miller 109). On one level, the
novel’s triangular love relationship, being a political allegory ending with Pyle’s
death, will serve to prophesy America’s eventual doom in Vietnam. On another level,
it reveals more about Fowler than he–and very possibly Greene–knows. Essential
to understanding Fowler is understanding where he comes from, Europe, and its
place in relation to Asia. Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, describing the
dynamics of power and domination that have always existed between Europe and
Asia, provides a historical context for understanding Fowler. Just as important,
however, is Otare Mannoni’s theory of Prospero and Caliban, a psychological
examination of the colonial mentality through The Tempest. Finally, Greene’s
portrayal of Phuong as a one-dimensional character (or maybe more precisely, as an
object for Fowler to perceive and act upon) serves as a testing ground for the two
theories. The application of these two theories to Fowler will show that his
actions in regard to Phuong fall considerably short of his anti-colonial liberal beliefs, and that
as much as Pyle is innocence unbound, Fowler is Memmi’s colonial Everyman, the
European who by definition of his history, culture and place in the colony, is a
colonizer.
The Relationships
Fowler is beset by considerable problems in trying to define what his relationship with Phuong is. He often gives contradictory descriptions of her, especially when confronted by Pyle, as if Pyle provokes reactions in him that one may call those “true feelings” towards Phuong that he will rarely admit. More
plausibly, his dual descriptions are the result of the fact that he doesn’t really understand who Phuong is. His first observation of Phuong will not set the tone of his relationship with her:
…I saw Phuong for a moment as I had seen her first, dancing past my table
at the Grande Monde…watched by an elder sister determined on a good
European marriage…And the girl whose name I didn’t know [finally] sat
quietly there, occasionally sipping her orange juice. owning herself
completely.(Greene 40)
Phuong does not own herself completely, except in a very paradoxical way. A
mandarin’s daughter in poverty, she, guided by her sister, is looking for a good
match, meaning a European; in the sense that she has that ability to give of herself,
she owns herself. She can choose between Pyle or Fowler as the best man
regarding her needs, but after that, they own her.
Her relationships to Fowler and Pyle are of a reciprocal nature that Mannoni will describe in his theory of Prospero and Caliban. It entails an exchange that Miss Hei, her elder sister, aptly sums up by saying, “[Phuong] is delicate…She needs care. She deserves care. She is very, very loyal” (Greene 42). Fowler is himself very aware of this aspect of his relationship with Phuong, for when he writes home to his wife seeking a divorce, he writes, “..she has been very loyal to me, but I know I’m not essential to her. If I leave her, she’ll be a little unhappy I think, but there won’t be any tragedy. She’ll marry someone else and have a family” (Greene 80). Phuong, he predicts, will recover, she will go on. The question that he never asks himself is, does he know why she will go on, or does here merely assume, because he knows no better?
Pyle’s perceptions of Phuong are perhaps more “innocent”; he seeks no exchange of loyalty for his care, but instead he “loves” Phuong–and in his case, love at least seems a more appropriate term for his feelings than Fowler’s — for what she represents to him. Before meeting Phuong, Pyle is first taken to the House of Five Hundred Girls, a local brothel. Witnessing the scramble of prostitutes for men, he’s shocked. He says to Fowler,
‘It’s terrible. I wouldn’t have believed…’ He said with sad awe. ‘They were so pretty.’ He was not envying Granger, he was complaining that anything
good–and prettiness and grace are surely forms of goodness–should be
marred or ill-treated.(Greene 39)
The Vietnamese prostitutes ply their trade, selling beauty. Phuong, according
to Miss Hei, is “the most beautiful girl in Saigon,” (Greene 42) and Pyle can only
agree; one beautiful thing being like another, he can only perceive goodness in
Phuong–a goodness that needs his protection. As the cabaret starts in the
nightclub where they sit, Pyle leans forward urgently and says, “Fowler, let’s go.
We’ve had enough, haven’t we? This isn’t a bit suitable for her?” (Greene 45)
This, however, is not just brotherly protection: “some people may be said to ‘colonise’ others. [Pyle] means to colonise Phuong and make a good, quiet American wife of her…” (McEwan, 75-76)
Both Fowler and Pyle have very different goals for Phuong. Their love
triangle is not so much about love as it is about power. For Pyle, a disciple of
pundit York Harding and his Role of Democracy and The Advance of Red China,
Vietnam is a country that needs American salvation. Phuong is an extension of his
Cold War quest, for she needs help as much as Vietnam. Fowler also needs
Phuong, in a different way. Fowler is the old colonial, as he will later admit to
Pyle in a fit of apology and despair, for he knows Pyle is about to die. Phuong is
the symbol of the colonized, of the colonizer’s prize–she is the object of
Orientalism and the servant for Prospero. She is Fowler’s Ariel.
Before the colonial relationship can be looked at, we need to look at the the
contemporary political relationship between the three actors in the triangle, for
the novel intends its political and love triangles to go together. Pyle, Phuong, and
Fowler represent, respectively, American idealism and innocence, Vietnamese
passivity, and European skepticism. Phuong’s name is supposed to mean Phoenix
in Vietnamese, a suggestion that she will “rise from whatever ashes her colonial
protectors reduce her to” (Donaghy 69), and indeed there is a sense of the eternal
in Phuong, the long-suffering but always enduring “Oriental”; in many ways,
Fowler will use this perception of the Oriental to justify his treatment of Phuong,
and Pyle will use it to justify his political intrigues that end by killing innocent
Vietnamese civilians.
It is on this political level that we see Fowler stand at his noblest, and yet at
his most hypocritical. It is also here that Pyle, unable to provoke Fowler into action
on the romantic level of the triangle, finally forces him into an act of ultimate
commitment. It is one night, as they wait trapped in a watchtower with two scared Vietnamese government soldiers, that Fowler expresses his feelings for the Vietnamese.
[The Vietnamese] don’t believe in anything either. You [Pyle] and your like
are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t
interested…They want enough rice…They don’t want to be shot at.
They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our
white skins telling them what they want.(Greene 94)
But along with this pity he feels for them–for it is pity, a “knowledgeability which
poses as informed concern for the Vietnamese [but disguising] a lack of real
compassion” (Donaghy 67)-there is another dimension. If what Fowler feels is not
compassion, but pity towards objects in pain, then how he perceives the Vietnamese
are as timeless objects.
…in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but [the
Vietnamese will] be growing paddy in these fields, they’ll be carrying their
produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats. The small
boys will still be sitting on the buffaloes.(Greene 95)
Fowler, the self-proclaimed reporter, remains “not involved.” He will observe and
record these miseries of the eternal Vietnamese peasant, but he will not act.
Unfortunately for himself, he, like other Greene characters, is
afflicted with that condition called pity, “the su1rfssed but inextinguishable emotion
which binds Fowler indissolubly from his fellow creatures and
makes it impossible for him to remain not involved” (Allot 72).
So, when Pyle finally forces Fowler’s hand, by arranging for York Harding’s
theoretical “Third Force” to become a reality, a reality which sets off a car bomb at
a busy noontime plaza, pity becomes action. Fowler inspects the scene of carnage, of
dead women and children where the military parade should have been, and asks
himself in anguish, “How many dead colonels justify a child’s or a trishaw driver’s death when you are building a national democratic front?” (Greene 163) Fowler finally takes action: he arranges for Pyle’s
death.
Pyle’s death and Fowler’s final commitment to involvement are the political
aspects of the triangle, and some critics contend that the political aspect sheds
some light on their romantic interrelationship. Pity, the motivating factor behind
Fowler, is the “quality of Fowler’s feelings for Phuong…through her, and through
the reactions which she arouses in Fowler, the author succeeds in making us
see how inevitable Fowler’s ultimate commitment really is…[this pity] is present
when he recalls the vulnerability of Phuong”(Allot 71). Fowler’s commitment to
pity is fulfilled on the political level when he arranges Pyle’s death to prevent
more killings for the “sake of democracy”, but Fowler never follows through for
Phuong. He sees her at the Grande Monde, pursues her, catches her. He keeps
her in his bed and at his opium pipe for two years. Does pity entail keeping her like
that, a bird (as he so often refers to her) in a cage, or does it entail letting her go?
Fowler is bound by marriage to a devout Catholic who will not divorce him, and
even after being recalled to England by his newspaper, and knowing that his wife
will not let him go, Fowler still keeps Phuong, and lies to her to doso.
Where, then, does his “commitment” lie? Strangely, it lies with Pyle.
Throughout the triangle, Fowler shows more feeling for Pyle–sympathy,
admiration, contempt, pity–than he ever does for Phuong. Fowler shows no
remorse at lying to Phuong, but considerable despair over Pyle’s death. By
involving himself to the extent that it takes to kill Pyle, Fowler sacrifices more
than he ever has for Phuong.
What is Phuong in this triangle, then, besides the eternal Phoenix, an Oriental
Phoenix that can be “reduced to ashes”? Phuong is hardly a character. “So shadowy
is [she] that one suspects Greene of intending the vagueness for allegorical
purposes…the Vietnamese voice and presence fades far into the background” (Donaghy
69). Whatever purposes Greene intends, “the result is frankly appalling, an excursion
into the world of Suzie Wong” (Smith 132). It is curious that Smith chooses to use
Suzie Wong as a comparison, for Suzie, the prostitute, is seductiveness, sexiness, and
submissiveness personified in the figure of the “Oriental girl”. That is basically what
Greene, through Fowler’s perceptions, has created. She is not a person so much as she is
a male fantasy, an object to be acted upon, or to use. At the same time, she allows
herself to be used (being such a loyal person) as long as use entails care.
Unconsciously, Greene has penetrated somewhat into the mindset of a colonized
Vietnamese, but Fowler has no conception of what or who she is. He merely notes her
actions, but the postcolonial reader can observe the subtleties of the relationship.
One critic notes that, “Although [Fowler’s) attraction to Phuong seems to based on
her willingness to satisfy his sexual needs, to serve him his opium pipe, and in
general, to be his childlike servant, she answers to a more profound need in him for
security, happiness, and peace” (Kelly 69). The profound need she fulfills is actually of
more importance than any sexual need, although this sexual fulfillment is an aspect of
their “happy” relationship. What she fulfils is what Fowler refuse to recognize
within himself, the colonizer’s infantile necessity for a dominant relationship.
On the political level, while Fowler rebuffs colonialism and destroys Pyle, the agent of an even more destructive neocolonialism, Fowler on the personal level is unable to translate his pity for the
Oriental Phoenix into an action of release, of freedom and equal treatment for her. Instead he remains “uninvolved” at the personal level, happy in not questioning his relationship of power to Phuong. He is very much the inheritor of the tradition of Orientalism, and the person Mannoni has in mind when he calls the colonial “Prospero.”
Mannoni, Prospero, and Caliban
Mannoni drew his theory from the French colonial occupation of Madagascar
in 1948, only a few years before the setting of The Quiet American. The observations
that he makes can often be applied to the colonial relationship between the French
and the Vietnamese. In this specific case, the mentality of Ariel can be applied to
Phuong even in her relationship with Fowler, an Englishman.
The relation of the Vietnamese to the French is that of a descendant to an
ancestor. Like the Malagasy, the Vietnamese share a belief in ancestor worship,
which originated with the belief in the ability of the dead to control the life of
the living. Specifically, it is the ability of the father, and behind him the
ancestors, to have far reaching control over the child. In that sense, the
Vietnamese have adopted the attitude of children to the French, who assume all
responsibility for the Vietnamese in the colonies, through their ability to conquer
and destroy (in that way, assuming the all-powerful and superhuman role left to the
ancestors). In time, of course, this physical authority that translates into the
Vietnamese concept of a Mandate of Heaven for legitimate rule became eroded.
By the time of The Quiet American, French power in Vietnam had been
humiliated by the Japanese during World War II. This was a signal for open
Vietnamese revolt against those who had lost their legitimacy due to their loss of
power. At this critical junction came the Americans and other Europeans to take the place of the French (Fitzgerald 369).
Even at this stage of waning French power, Mannoni notes that
It should thus be clear what makes a colonial situation so easy to exploit:
it is the fact that the inhabitants of the colony, the blacks and the whites,
are divided amongst themselves and that there is no possibility of concord
between them; the fact that the natives are denied their rights,not because
it pays, but simply because they are natives; the fact that the standard of
living is kept low because the native will put up with it just because he is
a native.(Mannoni 203)
It is in this type of economic situation that Fowler and his fellow American and
Europeans flourish, an economy that disowns mandarin’s daughters like Phuong.
Even without French colonial power, the colonial economy still exists, and can be
used and perpetuated, as the Americans will discover.
The French still regarded the Vietnamese as a second-rate class of people, a
“childish” group receptive to improvement, but always beneath Frenchmen. They
were “savage peoples” in a “savage country” (Mannoni 21). It is this “savage
country’\ or more appropriately, desert island, that serves as the archetype for the
colonial Robinson Crusoe:
Colonial countries are still the nearest approach possible to the archetype
of the desert island, and the native still best represents the archetype of
the socius and the enemy, Friday and the cannibals.(Mannoni 105)
On the desert island, Crusoe the white man is king. Among the black savages,
his technology gives him the right–the Mandate of Heaven–to rule. Examined
specifically within the context of colonialism, the relation between colonizer and
colonized is one between those with, respectively, an inferiority complex and a
dependency complex. These complexes, or “psychological climates” as Mannoni calls them, arise out of two different civilizations and mentalities.
The inferiority complex is typical of a man (i.e., Crusoe) who has chosen to
escape society and found his own world without men. Fitzgerald characterizes the
colonial as a “child”, insecure and inferior within his own culture, and out “to build an
empire for himself in a world that will unquestioningly accept his dominion”
(Fitzgerald 371). Fowler, too, is a man who fears home and feels uncertain within that
context. “Do you really believe,” he asks a companion, “that I want to go home?…!
like it here. At home there are–problems” (Greene 30). Later, he takes a more radical
attitude. “I’m going back,” he says. “Home?” his friend asks. “No–England” (Greene
68).
Vietnam is home now for Fowler, a place where he does not have to deal with
a problem marriage or painful, complicated affairs. This fear of uncertainty, coupled
with the resolution Phuong provides, will later be explored as the key to his psyche.
Meanwhile, he acknowledges that “England is to [him] the scene of [his] failure”
(Greene 80). Fowler has fled to Vietnam, not with “colonial” aims of economic
exploitation or military conquest, but on a bid to escape the (European) world of
“men” (women may be the better word in Fowler’s case). Nevertheless, even as a
directionless colonial, he is “the colonizer [who] partakes of an elevated world from
which he reaps the privileges” (Memmi 13) and he cannot escape this indictment,
because all Europeans are privileged in the colonies.
Mannoni agrees, saying that all colonials are Prosperos, for, as Said will later
claim, Prospero is in the unconscious. The drama of Prospero and Caliban is used by
Mannoni to explain the situation in Madagascar, explaining the native revolt
against the French masters’ inexplicable bad treatment of them. Caliban revolted not so much because he was the slave of Prospero, but because Prospero arbitrarily punished him. The same black and white parallel cannot be drawn to Fowler’s relationship to Phuong for she is more like
Ariel, who has given up independence to be bound in servitude. Fowler, however,
is very much the Prospero, for he “lacks awareness of the world of Others, as world
in which Others have to be respected. This is the world from which the colonial has
fled because he cannot accept men as they are. Rejection of that world is
combined with an urge to dominate…” (Mannoni 108-109) It is interesting that
Mannoni casts the “Others” as those from Prospero’s homeland; Said characterizes
the “Other” as the Oriental. Applied to Fowler, it indicates that he can neither relate
to England or the Vietnamese; he has fled from one to come to subjugate the Other
whom he does not have to understand.
Mannoni again provides us with a clue to Fowler: “…the problem for human
beings, however much they differ from one another, was to acquire not the
ability, but the will to understand each other” (Mannoni 34). Fowler, not coming
to understand or to make profits, has other psychological needs which have to be
fulfilled, but this too makes him a colonial according to Mannoni. He tells Pyle:
‘…I wanted to keep [Phuong].’ ‘At any cost to her?’
‘Of course…She doesn’t need protection. I want her around. I want her in
my bed.’(Greene 132)
Fowler’s relationship with Phuong is simply not one of sex, as Kelly has
observed. The relationship fulfils those psychological needs that arise out of his
Prospero complex, the archetype of the desert island that is Vietnam, and the long
tradition of Orientalism, a history of European exploitation and oppression of Asia. Mannoni acknowledges the link between his theory of
colonization and Orientalism: he explains that at the root of the colonial Prospero
are a group of traits, latent, repressed, and in the form of a complex, ready to
emerge from the European psyche under the pressure of life in the colonies.
Although he is referring specifically to the inferiority complex of the European
colonizer, we can see that there can be another group of traits that fall under the
category of Orientalism.
Said and Orientalism
In Orientalism, Edward Said seeks to explain the current conception of
“Orientals” as a culmination of a historical process of interaction between Europe
and Asia. Said characterizes the Orient (as it is viewed from a European
perspective) as the Other. In every way, the Orient is opposed to Europe, the
Occident, and has helped to define it by contrasting with it. Orientalism, as Said is
concerned with it, is an academic philosophy, but can also be viewed as a tradition
that has influenced politics, economics, and cultural and social interaction.
In a sense, Orientalism was a library or archive of information commonly,
and in some of its aspects, unanimously held. What bound
the archive together was a family of ideas and a unifying set of values
proven in various ways to be effective. These ideas explained the
behavior of Orientals; they supplied Orientals with a mentality, a
genealogy, an atmosphere; most important, they allowed Europeans to
deal with and even to see Orientals as a phenomenon possessing
regular characteristics.(Said 42)
This concept of the Oriental as a “package” of uniform traits is called the
“mark of the plural” by Memmi. It is a method of depersonalization, for it is
much easier for the colonizer not to have to deal with the colonized on an individual basis. The “anonymous collectivity” of the colonized can easily be
acted upon through this depersonalized objectification. Fowler is guilty of this within the first few pages of narration; referring to Phuong, he says:
To take an Annamite to bed with you is like taking a bird: they twitter and
sing on your pillow. There had been a time when I thought none of there
voices sang like Phuong’s. I put out my hand and touched her arm–their
bones too were as fragile as a bird’s.(Greene 12-13)
The recurring image of the bird (i.e., the phoenix) is combined with the
depersonalizing “they”, and the generalization of traits. In a later episode, in the
watchtower with Pyle and the two Vietnamese soldiers, he says, “the sound of
our white voices–for voices have a colour, too, yellow voices sing, and black
voices gargle, [and] ours just speak-” (Greene 96-97). He generalizes with both
white and colored voices, but whites “just speak”. This statement raises the obvious
spectre of Eurocentrism, as if there is a normative sound of “speaking” and that
that normative reference is the white voice.
Another important aspect of Orientalism is the eternal concept of the
Oriental, combined with images of repetition and strength (Said 72); yet, for all
these qualities, the Oriental is still decidedly inferior. In a previous quote, Fowler
predicts that the Vietnamese will still be tilling the rice paddies after New York and
London have vanished (Greene 95). While this may seem a compliment on the
Vietnamese’s survivability, the obvious implication is that the Vietnamese are too
simple to ever develop an “advanced” Western civilization which, in spite of and
because of its technological sophistication, has the power to destroy itself.
Fowler, in part through his linguistic slips, has shown us that, liberal though
he is, he has not escaped from Orientalism, “a Western style for dominating,
restructuring, and having authority over the Orient….no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism.” (Said 3) Fowler, just as he is caught up in his own Prospero complex, cannot escape from the added
shackle of being an unknowing inheritor of this European mode of thought. Of
course, Said’s statement also applies to Greene, whom one always feel is but a step
behind Fowler anyway.
In regards to Fowler’s relationship with Phuong, one important characteristic
and one important subtradition within Orientalism have to be considered. First,
referring back to the concept of the Oriental as the Other, is the characteristic of
the Oriental as being an “object”. Said states that the object will be characterized
by its passiveness and non-participatory nature, and most importantly, by its
non-active, non-autonomous, and non-sovereign attitude towards itself (Said 97).
The subtradition is exemplified by Flaubert’s Salammbo, and the heroine, an Egyptian courtesan. The courtesan, according to Said, “became a widely influential model for the Oriental
woman; she never speaks for herself, she never represented her emotions,
presence or history. [Flaubert] spoke for and represented her” (Said 6).
Literature and the Oriental woman, as a subtradition, presented a pattern of
“relative strength between East and West.” The “masculine,” expressive
“West” finds little obstacle in dominating the “feminine,” subdued “East.”
All of this, of course, is reflected in Fowler and Phuong’s relationship.
Fowler cannot understand Phuong because of her silence, although to credit, he
has tried. “…she didn’t have the gift of expression, that was all. And [Fowler]
remembered that first tormenting year when [he] had tried so passionately to
understand her, when [he] had begged her to tell [him] what she thought and had
scared her with [his] unreasoning anger at her silences.” (Greene 134) Fowler cannot understand her; it does not mean that Greene understands Vietnamese women any better.
Fowler, for all that he cannot understand her, and no doubt influenced by her
passive nature, assumes that he can. Fowler is explicit in noting her passivity and
non-participatory nature: in a conversation with Pyle concerning Phuong (who is
present) he says, “One always spoke of her in the third person, as though she were
not there. Sometimes she seemed invisible like peace.” (Greene 44-45) Like peace,
one doesn’t really notice Phuong until she is gone. It is only when Pyle has Phuong
that Fowler notes her absence with regret.
After “recovering” Phuong {through Pyle’s death) Fowler is subject to
remorse, and ironically believes himself to be the only one who loved Pyle.
He tells Phuong,
‘Pyle est mort. Assassine.’
She put the needle down and sat back on her heels, looking at me. There
was no scene, no tears, just thought–the long private thought of somebody
who has to alter a whole course of life…She nodded and taking up the
needle again began to heat the opium…! thought suddenly with
anger….’Am I the only one who really cared for Pyle?’(Greene 80)
Is he? Does he know if she cares? Should she care, considering the motives
underlying Pyle’s love, and considering her own situation as a colonized person?
Pyle, before he dies, raises the issue of understanding with Fowler. Does Fowler,
Pyle ask, understand Phuong? Fowler has his bittersweet revenge:
And waking that morning months later with Phuong beside me,
I thought, ‘And did you [PyleJ understand her either? Could you have anticipated this situation? Phuong so happily asleep beside me and you dead?’(Greene 60)
Of course, he assumes that she is happy, when the reality of the situation is not
a question of happiness. A colonized, a subordinate person, she like the Malagasies
and the rest of the Vietnamese seeks someone to assume responsibility for her. In
that sense, “love” and “happiness” are subsidiary concerns to survival, and as one
critic puts it, she “pursues her own interests in a way that is consistent with her
nature.” (Miller 109) Being acted upon constantly by Pyle and Fowler, inclined to
be passive by nature, she can only take the rare opportunities for action available
to her.
Beyond her passive and non-participatory role, she follows Flaubert’s
Oriental characterization in two more ways. Flaubert is entranced by the Egyptian
courtesan’s “self-suffering [and] emotional carelessness…less a woman than a
display of impressive but verbally inexpressive femininity…she could say….”Je
ne suis pas une femme, je suis un monde” (Said 187). Not a woman, but a
representation, an amalgamation of femininity as conceived in a male power
fantasy; Phuong is subject to that as well. Fowler does not regard her as a person as
much as, at alternate times, a commodity or as an embodiment of something. “[He]
shut [his] eyes and she was again the same as she used to be; she was the hiss of
steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of
rest”(Greene 12). How important she is to him is a reflection of how much service
she can provide: “…[Fowler] knew that when [he] had smoked four pipes [he]
would no longer want her. Of course, it would be agreeable to feel her thigh beside
[him] in the bed–she always slept on her back, and when [he] woke in the morning,
[he] could start the day with a pipe, instead of with [his] own company” (Greene
14). For a male power fantasy, the world of inexpressive femininity is summed up in providing service and comfort. The second Oriental characteristic Flaubert discusses is “Oriental sex”. Oriental sex and writers have a long tradition, and in the twentieth century, Said points out Gide, Conrad, and Maugham,
and I will add Greene to the list. Said characterizes Oriental sex as a different type of
sexuality that was easy to come by and not guilt-ridden; both aspects involve a
depersonalization of the object of Oriental sex, to remove the issue of “morality” that
might trouble more conscientious writers.
Fowler, for one, is preoccupied by “the girls in white silk trousers”, the image
that occurs repeatedly in the text, and of course we’ve seen the “Annamite birds” on his pillow.
when he is provoked by Pyle: His true feelings for Phuong come out “Suddenly [Fowler] couldn’t stand his boyishness any longer. [He] said, ‘I don’t care that for her interests. You can
have her interests. I only want her body. I want her in bed with me. I’d rather ruin
her body and sleep with her than, than …look after her damned interests” (Greene 59).
The problem in examining Fowler is determining what he really thinks as
opposed to what he says. He makes several references to only wanting Phuong for sex,
but only when provoked by Pyle; on the other hand, he only says he loves Phuong
once, and that time in a letter to his wife pleading for a divorce. Throughout the
novel, his actions and words do not agree with that one claim of love, and it it s a
culmination of both the Orientalist tradition and his Prospero complex.
Conclusion
Fowler is not just a bundle of complexes, controlled by historical and
cultural forces beyond his control. Who he is makes him ripe material for the
act of colonizing. Mannoni, in his theory of the Prospero complex, says that at the
heart of every colonizer is the child; the colonizer has not matched his infantile
needs to the demands of the adult world. For Fowler, love and childish fear
intertwine in his mind. Pyle demands to know what Phuong means to Fowler: is all
she is a service and a commodity? Fowler responds:
‘All, Pyle? Wait until you are afraid of living ten years alone with no
companion and a nursing home at the end of it. Then you’ll start running in
any direction even away from that girl in the red dressing gown, to find
someone, anyone, who will last until you are through.’(Greene 105)
Fowler is very afraid of life alone. It is not the lack of love that troubles him,
however: notice that love never arose in his discussion of his need for Phuong.
He doesn’t love her, and he’s aware that she doesn’t love him. Just as she needs
someone to take care of her, he needs someone to be loyal and take care of him.
In the past, he has loved; the following passage comes after he talks about the
woman whom he loved in England and whom he ran away from:
‘You see [Pyle]? The [girl in the red dressing gown] loved me. I was
afraid of losing love. Now, I’m only afraid of losing Phuong…’
‘But she loves you, doesn’t she?’
‘Not like that. It isn’t in their nature. You’ll find that out. It’s a
cliche to call them children–but that’s one thing which is childish.
They love you in return for kindness, security, the presents you give them–
they hate you for a blow or an injustice. They don’t know what it’s like–
just walking into a room and loving a stranger. For an aging man, Pyle, it’s
very secure-she won’t run away from me as long as the home is happy.’
(Greene 104)
Again, Fowler shows that he’s not ignorant of the Vietnamese psyche, but
that does not excuse him from being a Prospero. It merely means that while
the French in Madagascar blundered about not knowing why the Malagasies
had revolted, Fowler is aware enough to be able to exercise control through
“kindness”. He is very willing to manipulate Phuong; it is not a question of
whether she can “love”, because “love” is a relatively recent Western construct
anyhow. Her inability to “love” as the West knows the term is not justification
for the act of colonizing.
The passage above is the key to Fowler’s psyche that was mentioned much
earlier. Two more passages are necessary to understand Fowler. The first refers to
the woman in England: he says, “We are fools when we love. I was terrified of
losing her. I thought I saw her changing–! don’t know if she was, but I couldn’t
bear the uncertainty any longer” (Greene 103). And Fowler, the despairing cynic,
says even earlier: “Death was far more certain than God, and with death there
would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying” (Greene 44).
Fowler has fled England because he could no longer bear the uncertainty of
Western adult love; he finds some comfort in death, whose presence will mean at
least that the uncertainty of love, its potential disappearance, cannot occur. Finally,
he wants Phuong, because she cannot love and he does not love her. To lose
Phuong is to lose no more than a nursemaid who will also have sex and tend the
opium pipe; to lose Phuong is to lose no more than a valuable, possibly
irreplaceable object. Phuong is Said’s Other, eternal, inscrutable, and impersonal.
She will never change, and even if she is incomprehensible, it is better for Fowler
than a familiar uncertainty.
Fowler has fled England because he cannot understand others; he loves the
Orient because he need not understand the Other. The Other is so different that
Fowler feels justified in equating a vast cultural and psychological difference with
inhumanity (humanity being defined by the European norm). “What is left of the
colonized at the end of this stubborn effort to dehumanize him?” Memmi muses. “He
is surely no longer an alter ego of the colonized. He is hardly a human being. He tends
rapidly towards becoming an object” (Memmi 86).
Behind it all, Fowler excuses himself; in his mind, the woman is a product of
the Orient, when it is he who is the product of Orientalism. She is inscrutable (instead
of his not being able to understand), sensual and willing (instead of his sexual
domination), and subdued and serving (instead of his control through technological
subjugation). He, like Prospero, cannot renounce power; he cannot, despite his
promise, free Ariel. He is addicted to power on his desert island, to his need for
servitude and submission from Ariel and the Calibans. Fowler, along with the other
Europeans, “has no idea of the extent to which a genuine and successful liberation of
[the] subject peoples would liberate [him], too…” (Mannoni 67). Meanwhile, Fowler
must always, contrary to his philosophy, remain “involved” and committed to the side
of the colonizers in their efforts to dehumanize the subjugated.
