The Quiet American Dialectical Journal
The Quiet American: Reading Log
PART I
Chapter 1
Narrator lives in room alone over Rue Catinat
Associated with a man named Pyle, has met him many times before
Phuong- meaning Phoenix waits for Pyle also. She speaks French. Phuong cannot wait in public as the police may pick her up
Phuong and Pyle are a couple
Phuong was once in a relationship with the narrator
Pyle "Had pronounced and aggravated views on what the US was doing for the world"
Narrator smokes opium pipes regularly
Phuong replies to the whether Pyle loves her and narrator's thoughts: "In Love?' Perhaps it was one of the phrases she didn't understand."
Pyle is an associate of General Thé
Narrator is not homesick? "I never wanted to go home." He's in love with …show more content…
Phuong still, yet Pyle has Phuong.
"'I wish I were Pyle,' I said aloud, but the pain was limited and bearable the opium saw to that."
Narrators name is Fowler. Fowler is a very polite gentleman, well mannered.
There seems to be no power for anyone, Police appear corrupt. "Legality was not essential in a country at war."
Different sides: Communists, French
Private armies: Hoa-Hoas, Caodists, General Thé
What is Phuong? Vigot believes she is a prostitute being paid.
Description of Pyle by Fowler: "He's a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American,' I summed him precisely up as I might have said, a blue lizard', a white elephant'."
Gives up waiting for Pyle, assumes him dead.
Pyle appears to be a young man, out of college. He was a 32 year old American, and employed in the Economic Aid Mission.
Fowler has been aged by the war.
Pyle "He was absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was determined I learnt that very soon to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world."
Phuong in a war: Pyle vs Fowler, she left Fowler for Pyle
"Everything was important to Pyle'"
Pyle is found dead under a bridge
Saigon is a very dangerous place, there're grilles on windows to keep out grenades
Vigot on Pyle: "I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm.'
God save us always,' I said, from the innocent and the good.'"
Vigot raises questions of Fowlers innocence
When IDing Pyle's body: Fowler thinks: "He looked more than ever out of place: he should have stayed at home. I saw him in a family snapshot album, riding on a dude ranch, bathing on Long Island, photographed with his colleagues in some apartment on the twenty-third floor. He belonged to the skyscraper and the express elevator, the ice-cream and the dry Martinis, milk at lunch, and chicken sandwiches on the Merchant Limited." Seems such a waste of innocent youth.
Fowler: "I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines." Work is his life
Pyle: "Before he died he had been responsible for at least fifty deaths, for it would have damaged Anglo-American relations, and the Minister would have been upset." Maybe Pyle wasn't as innocent as he appeared. How could he be responsible for these deaths if he was there to help.
Phuong stays the night then with Fowler, she doesn't show much loyalty. Fowler thinks: "am I the only one who really cared for Pyle?'"
Chapter 2
1
Flashback
"The French, who were, when all was said, fighting this war"
Pyle Before: "Pyle was quiet, he seemed modest, sometimes that first day I had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. And he was very, very serious."
"But he criticized nobody."
Pyle seems young and homesick
Fowler doesn't have an opinion on much; he just sits on the fence.
Pyle is loyal to those he respects.
Fowler is a much respected journalist; he's greeted members of Parliament, the British Prime Minister
Private Army's cont Binh Xuyen
3rd Army: General Thé, was Caodaist, Chief of Staff, "But he's taken to the hills to fight both sides, the French, the Communists "
Fowler is in love with Phuong, and doesn't want to return home.
2
Fowler doesn't know how to deal with death, after Pyle died. "One is not jealous of the dead, and it seemed easy to me that morning to take up our old life together." He has Phuong back.
Army's cont Vietminh, Vietnamese Sureté
Very mixed up war
Fowler about Pyle's death: "You can rule me out,' I said. I'm not involved. Not involved,' I repeated. It had been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action even an opinion is a kind of action."
Pyle isn't very wealthy. She has a box of possessions ("It contained her picture books.") She had "Less than a week-end visitor's at home".
Fowler was jealous of Pyle: "But, after all, he had had Phuong." If he really cared about Phuong he wouldn't be talking about her as an object, but as a person.
Fowler again: "Do you really believe,' I said, that I want to go home?'"
"Death takes people in different ways.'" Death is meaningless now
About Pyle and the 3rd force: "He said in a low voice, tense with ambiguity, He had special duties.'"
"They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about, and you gave him money and York Hardin's books on the East and said, "Go ahead. Win the East for Democracy." He never saw anything he hadn't heard in a lecture-hall and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him." Ignorant, silly, foolish. He's a young American who thinks he has Super Powers.
Chapter 3
1
Pyle is very polite and well mannered too: "I was wondering whether you and your lady,' Pyle said, would step across and join my table.'" Treats Phuong as a person, lady.
Phuong is again referred to without respect: "Who's the dame?' . Miss Phuong is a friend of Fowler's,' Pyle said stiffly. We want to know who ' Where'd he find her? You got to be careful in this town.'"
"Great Victory north-west of Hanoi, French recaptured two villages they never told us they'd lost. Heavy Vietminh casualties. Haven't been able to count their own yet but will let us know in a week or two.'" "'They wouldn't tell us about that in Hanoi. That's not a victory.'" War
Vietnam: "This was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here?"
Fowler: Í stopped our trishaw outside the Chalet and said to Phuong, Go in and find a table. I had better look after Pyle.' That was my first instinct to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence in like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." Maybe Fowler's the ignorant one?
"It may have been a trick of the lamplight, but his face looked haggard. It occurred to me that he was quite possible a virgin. Come along, Pyle,' I said. Leave them to Granger.' I saw his hand move towards his hip pocket. I really believe he intended to empty his pickets of piastres and greenbacks. A brothel.
2
Fowler's sense of humor can be quite sick. "Pyle looked at me as though I were another Granger. Suddenly I saw myself as he saw me, a man of middle age, with eyes a little bloodshot, beginning to put on weight, ungraceful in love, less noisy than Granger perhaps but more cynical, less innocent, and I saw Phuong for a moment as I had seen her first, dancing past my table at the Grand Monde in a white ball-dress, eighteen years old, watched by an elder sister who had been determined on a good European marriage." Phuong is probably young enough to be his daughter.
"It had been a long and frustrating courtship. If I could have offered marriage and a settlement everything would have been easy, and the elder sister would have slipped quietly and tactfully away whenever we were together." Fowler's immoral, and probably married, having and affair with a young girl.
"But they don't use sewing machines. There wouldn't be any electricity where they live.; she was a very literal woman." Shows the country is really very poor and Phuong doesn't know of a world any wealthier.
Fowler: "From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift." Fowler doesn't have Phuong because they are in love. He's got her because she makes him happy for the moment. If something better came along, he'd take it.
"Fowler,' he said, let's go. We've had enough, haven't we? This isn't a bit suitable for her.'" Phuong is talked about in the Third Person; she can't make decisions by herself. However, Pyle's being a thoughtful by getting her away from drunken sailors.
Chapter 4
1
"The priest shut his breviary and said, Well, that's finished.' He was a European, but not a Frenchman, for the Bishop would not have tolerated a French priest in his diocese. He said apologetically, I have come up here, you understand, for a bit of quiet from all those poor people.'" It must have been really terrible for a priest to need time to himself.
"The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking, Two can play at that game.' I too took my eyes away: we didn't' want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death. I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself." These would have been the killing fields. Fowler just looks at it and relates it back to himself, selfishly, yet others would've broken down at such an atrocity.
Fowler goes into the site of war.
Pyle has managed to follow him without aid, and survive, this in itself, is a miracle.
2
Pyle confides in Fowler that he loves Phuong and that he wants to take her away.
They decide to eventually ask Phuong, not to make the decision for her.
Fowler worries for himself, Pyle worries about what Phuong wants.
Chapter 5
1
Fowler on Pyle: "He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he might cause others. On one occasion but that was months later I lost control and thrust his foot into it, into the pain I mean, and I remember how he turned away and looked at his stained shoe in perplexity and said, I must get a shine before I see the Minister.'" Fowler's description of Pyle fits Fowler at times.
Fowler has limited feelings.
"I said, I'm going back.' Home?' Pietry asked, throwing a dour-to-one. No. England.'" Fowler no longer feels like England is home. Although his life was there, he has been away so long that everything in Vietnam is home to him.
PART II
Chapter 1
It's had to describe Fowler with this: "I was to see many times that look of pain and disappointment touch has eyes and mouth when reality didn't match the romantic ideas he cherished, or when someone he had loved or admired dropped below the impossible standard he had set." It's almost as if he knows Pyle's disappointments himself, maybe that he was once like Pyle. Yet he too has let Pyle down, just as he was let down before.
Pyle asks Phuong to marry him, after giving her a description of his love towards her.
Thomas Fowler
Pyle isn't much of a romantic; he doesn't know how to go about women.
Phuong knows more than she lets on. She just lets the men believe she's all fragile and innocent.
Chapter 2
1
History: "At least once a year the Caodaist hold a festival at the Holy See in Tanyin."
The Caodaist's have a very rich and seemingly beautiful history and culture.
"Pyle said solemnly, "a man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.'"
2
Pyle is having a really hard time dealing Phuong not loving him. He can't stand not being with her, and has decided to ask for a transfer. He wont make Phuong love him, he wants her to be happy, and can live with that.
"I told the Economic Attaché you met him Joe more or less the facts.' I suppose he thinks I'm a bastard not to let you walk off with my girl.' Oh no, he rather sided with you.'" The friendship has been ruined, because Fowler wants Phuong, he can't lose anything.
Pyle and Fowler end up stranded in a watch tower one night.
"I have read so often of people's thoughts in the moment of fear: of God, or family, or a woman. I admire their control. I thought of nothing, not even of the trap-door above me: I ceased, for those seconds, to sexist: I was fear taken neat. At the top of the ladder I banged my head because fear couldn't count steps, hear, or see. Then my head come over the earth floor and nobody shot at me and fear seeped away." This situation was so serious, one could lose their life so easily. I believe that Pyle in that situation would've been thinking of Phuong. Phuong doesn't mean that much to Fowler, nothing means that much to him.
3
"You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested.' They don't want communism.' They want enough rice,' I said. 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 around them telling them what they want.'" So the people fighting the war are fighting a war that isn't theirs. They don't want what they're being told they want. Everyone is treating them with communism.
Fowler has a wife. He doesn't want to go back to her though.
4
Pyle is much stronger than Fowler.
Fowler gets injured and Pyle comes back for him. He won't leave him. Fowler probably would've left Pyle.
Pyle saves Fowler and Fowler can only think that he "Hadn't asked to be saved." Most people would be grateful.
Chapter 3
1
"What are you afraid of?' Phuong asked, and I thought, I'm afraid of the loneliness, of the Press Club and the bed sitting room, I'm afraid of Pyle.'" Fowler seems to be concluding that he has lost Phuong.
Fowler receives a telegram from his wife. It appears that he's been know to like the company of other women.
"Her pain struck at my pain: we were back at the old routine of hurting each other. If only it were possible to love without injury fidelity isn't enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to process another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation." He really did love his wife.
"How much can you pride yourself on being degage, the reporter, not the leader-writer, and what a mess you make behind the scenes. The pother kind of war is more innocent than this. One does less damage with a mortar.'" Fowler's been hurt, so he has to hurt other. He let him get attached and involved again, as he's had past experiences, and has ended up hurt. This explains his bitterness and rules at the beginning of the novel.
He realizes that it's not a bidding race for Phuong. He can't beat Pyle, because Pyle has the genuine love for Phuong, and no money.
"I wondered how Pyle over the years would stand that hard core, for Pyle was a romantic." Pyle will survive because Pyle can love, and be loved in return.
2
p122 Description of Dominguez, a man Fowler owed his career in Vietnam to.
Dominguez once told Fowler:"I would like you to meet a friend of mine. He has a story you should listen to.'"
The motivation of Pyle to join the Third Force:
"He was talking about the old colonial powers England and France, and how you couldn't expect to win the confidence of the Asiatic. that was where America came in now with clean hands.'"
"He said a Third Force could do it. There was always a Third Force to be found free from Communism and the taint of colonialism national democracy he called it; you only had to find a leader and keep him safe from the old colonial powers.'" This is what influenced Pyle.
The real people of Vietnam wanted the Third Force, their force.
3
Fowler wants to keep Phuong at any cost to her, which is not love. Pyle wants to love and to protect Phuong. They still don't involve Phuong in the fight over her.
"Oh, I know your motives are good, they always are.' He looked puzzled and suspicious. I ish sometimes ou had a few bad motives, you might understand a luittle more about human beings. And that applies to your country too, Pyle.'"
PART III
Chapter 1
1
"You don't follow your own principles, Fowler. You're engage, like the rest of us.'" Fowler has always thought of himself as different. But really, he's just the same.
2
Phuong left Fowler
"In the moment of shock there is little pain." Fowler starts to realize that everything about Phuong, he has taken for granted.
3
Alden Pyle.
Pyle appears to have run off with Phuong. Fowler thinks he stole the "Girl he was sleeping with." From him.
Fowler starts being delusional: "This is a situation where people do behave badly."
4
Fowler leaves, he packs up and goes north as the depression from losing Phuong is overwhelming him. He tries to move on but seems to be stuck because she was taken' and he can't have anything taken' from him.
5
Trouin, a soldier: "It's not a matter of reason or justice. We all get involved in a moment of emotion and then we cannot get out. War and Love they have always been compared.'" This is Trouin's theory in response to Fowler not getting involved.'
"You are a journalist. You know better than I do that we can't win but we are professionals: we have to go on fighting till the politicians tell us tot stop. Probably they will get together and agree to the same peace that we could have had at the beginning, making nonsense of all these years.' You would not understand the nonsense, Fowler. You are not one of us.'" There are no winners in a war.
Fowler takes Trouin's advice, and goes home with the girl for sale. "But his advice did not prove sound. A man's body is limited in the acts which it can perform and mine was frozen by memory. What my hands touched that night might be more beautiful than I was used to, but we are not trapped only by beauty. She used the same perfume, and suddenly at the moment of entry the ghost of what I'd lost proved more powerful than the body stretched at my disposal. I moved away and lay on my back and desire drained out of me." Fowler is incomplete. He cannot love.
Chapter 2
1
When Fowler returns to Saigon, he's not welcomed by anyone. He's still wistful about Phuong and ask about her.
He still thinks he has a chance to get her back. Fowler's still looking to compete against Pyle.
"No.' I told myself that it wouldn't have made any difference anyway: a reprieve for one year couldn't stand up against a marriage settlement." Are you married yet?' I asked. No.' he blushed he had a great facility in blushing. As a matter of fact I'm hoping to get special leave. Then we could get married at home properly.'"
"Is it more proper when it happens at home?' Well, I thought it's difficult to say these things to you, you are so darned vynical, Thomas, but it's a mark of respect. My father and mother would e there she'd kind of enter the family. It's important in view of the past.' The past?' Is it more proper when it happens at home?' Well, I thought it's difficult to say these things to you, you are so darned vynical, Thomas, but it's a mark of respect. My father and mother would e there she'd kind of enter the family. It's important in view of the past.' The past?' You know what I mean. I wouldn't want to leave her behind there with any stigma ' would you leave her behind?' I guess so. My mother's a wonderful woman she's take her around, introduce her, you know, kind of fit her it. She'd help her to get a home ready for me.'" A home ready for me, Pyle is self-centered also but the key point he makes is that he "RESPECTS" her.
"I didn't know whether to feel sorry for Phuong or not she had looked forward so to the skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty, but she had so little idea of all they would involve Strangely I found myself saying: Go easy with her, Pyle. Don't force things. She can be hurt like you or me.'" Fowler finally wishes them well.
2
A bomb goes off in the Rue Catinat. "And a man without his legs lay twitching at the edge of the ornamental gardens.'"
Fowler goes looking for Phuong and bumps into Pyle. "Pyle,' I said, for Christ's sake, where's your Legation pass? We've got to get across. Phuong's in the milk-bar.' No, no,' he said. Pyle, she is. She always goes there. At eleven thirty. We've got to find her.' She isn't there, Thomas.' How do you know? Where's your card?' I warned her not to go.' Fowler realizes that Pyle is responsible for the deaths of these innocent lives. He questions him about the lack of American losses; the American's were all warned. Fowler shows genuine concern and care still for Phuong.
"The dead were left to their owners, for one can own the dead as one owns a chair. A woman sat on the ground with what was left of her baby in her lap; with a kind of modesty she had covered it with her straw peasant hat." The sadness of these losses by these people just cannot be imagined by the people who're causing this.
"Pyle said, It's awful.' He looked at the wet on his shoes and said in a sick voice, what's that?' Blood' I said. Haven't you ever seen it before?' He said I must get them cleaned before I see the Minister.' Pyle is more concerned about his shoes than the crime he's caused. What is wrong with him? No sane person would be like this.
"This is the hour when the place is always full of women and children it's the shopping hour. Why choose that of all hours?' He said weekly, there was to have been a parade.' And you hoped to catch a few colonels. But the parade was cancelled yesterday, Pyle.'" Fowler shows the feelings he has for the crime. He gets involved at the injustice of the whole situation and that Pyle should've know better. There's no reason to lose innocent lives.
He tells Pyle: "you've put General Thé on the map all right, Pyle. You've go the Third Force and National Democracy all over your right shoe. Go home to Phuong and tell her about your heroic dead there are a few dozen less of her people to worry about.'" Fowler doesn't understand how Pyle could do this.
"Innocence is a kind of insanity." This has summed up Pyle throughout the novel. He does crazy things because he doesn't realize the repercussions; he believes he's doing good.
Pyle's only response to this is: "Thé wouldn't have done this. I'm sure he wouldn't. somebody deceived him. The communists '" Pyle still stays loyal to General Thé, just making excuses because he can't be let down by those he respects.
Pyle "was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance."
PART IV
Chapter 1
Back to after Pyle's death
Vigot visits Fowler once more and spots the book Fowler took from Pyle's place to remind him of his friend. When asked "Who is this York Harding?'" Fowler replies, "He's the man you are looking for, Vigot. He killed Pyle at long range.'"
Vigot believes that Fowler has something to do with Pyle's murder. He thinks that they met up. Fowler keeps denying this.
Vigot's reason is "Because of the dog.' Vigot said. And the mud between its toes?' It wasn't mud. It was cement. You see, somewhere that night, when it was following Pyle, it stepped into wet cement. I remembered that on the ground-floor of the apartment there are builders at work they are still at work. I passed them tonight as I came in. they work long hours in this country.'" The whole mystery seems to be filling in. Vigot knows that Fowler didn't murder Pyle but wants to know why they met the night of Pyle's murder.
"When Vigot was gone there was still an hour to wait for Phuong and living company. It was strange how disturbed I had been by Vigot's visit. It was as though a poet had brought me his work to criticize and through some careless action I had destroyed it. I was a man without a vocation one cannot seriously consider journalism as a vocation, but I could recognize a vocation in another. Now that Vigot was gone to close his uncompleted file, I wished I had the courage to call him back and say, You are right. I did see Pyle the night he died.'" Why would Fowler have seen Pyle the night he died unless there was something not legal about the whole affair?
Chapter 2
1
After the bombings
Fowler goes to see Monsieur Heng, confiding that Pyle caused the bombings.
"General Thé is not a very controlled character.' And bombs aren't for boys from Boston. Who is Pyle's chief, Heng?' I have the impression that Mr Pyle is very much his own master.' Fowler is trying to find out who is responsible for the order of the horrific bombings. Pyle's beginning to look as though he's quite high up in this army.
Monsieur Heng suggests to Fowler to publish an article on Pyle to stop him. "My paper's not interested in General Thé. They are only interested in your people, Heng.' You really want Mr Pyle stopped, Mr Fowler?' ;If you'd seen him, Heng. He stood there and said it was all a sad mistake, there should have been a parade. He said he'd have to get his shoes cleaned before he saw the Minister.'" Due to Pyle's lack of guilt at the situation, it looks as though Fowler is getting someone to deal with Pyle.
Monsieur Heng suggests "if you would invite him to dinner tonight at the Vieux Moulin. Between eight thirty and nine thirty.'" And Monsieur Heng adds, "We would talk to him on the way,'"
Fowler is taking a …show more content…
side.
"Sooner of later,' Heng said, and I was reminded of Captain Trouin speaking in the opium house, one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.'" You can't ignore what goes on in a war if you are human.
2
"I was glad to get your note, Thomas. This morning I thought you were mad at me.' Perhaps I was. It wasn't a pretty sight.'"
Pyle has seen General Thé in the meantime: "Saw him? Is he in Saigon? I suppose he came to see how his bomb worked.' That's in confidence, Thomas. I dealt with him very severely.' He spoke like the captain of a school-team who has found one of his boys breaking his training. All the same I asked him with a certain hope, Have you thrown him over?'" Pyle talks like he's the boss. Just General Thé is the face of the whole Third Force.
Pyle tells Fowler that in a week they'll have forgotten it all. That the whole mess will have blown over and they can still be friends. He doesn't feel guilty because he's wired the relatives of the dead. Now Pyle can go home to Phuong and live his life.
"I drive through the streets and I care not a damn,
The people they stare and they ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money."
Pyle knows his life is in danger yet carrying a gun "It wouldn't' do any good if they wanted to get me, they always could.'"
Fowler has changed, yet Pyle's been so wrapped up in himself and his devious Third Force, that he hasn't noticed.
"There's always a point of change,' I said. Some moment of emotion ' You haven't reached it yet. I doubt if you every will. And I'm not likely to change either except with death,' he added merrily. Not even with this morning? Mightn't that change a man's views?' They were only war casualties,' he said. It was a pity, but you can't always hit your target. Anyway they died in the right cause.'"
Pyle still doesn't see anything wrong with the people he's killed.
"I wanted him to go away quickly and die.'" Fowler seems disgusted in his friend. It's like he hates himself for not seeing quicker what Pyle was doing, Fowler feels responsible because he didn't stop him.
Fowler is too moral to not feel guilt. "There was no harm in giving him that one chance. don't mind being late,'" Fowler's guilt about what'll happen to his friend is setting in, and he's trying to get him to avoid the time of his
death.
"I handed back the decision to that somebody in whom I didn't believe: You can intervene if You want to: a telegram on his desk: a message from the Minister. You cannot exit unless you have the power to alter the future.'" Pyle doesn't have the power to go against his beliefs to change the future.
3
"Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist in terms of quantity and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again."
Fowler sees Granger again. "Don't go Fowler. Haven't you got a heart? I can't talk to those Froggies.' You're drunk.' I've had two glasses of champagne, that's all, and wouldn't you be drunk in my place? I've got to go north.' What's wrong with that?' Oh, I didn't tell you, did I? I keep on thinking everyone knows. I got a cable this morning from my wife.' Yes?' My son's got polio. He's bad.'"
Granger can't get out of going north for work to see his son because it's work. He has to cover for others. Fowler offers to do it for him, which is really kind. It shows that Fowler does have a heart and feelings.
Chapter 3
Phuong and Fowler are living their lives together.
Fowler gets a telegram from his wife, who's extremely angry at him.
She's divorcing him.
Fowler gives Phuong the happy ending she wants.
Fowler doesn't propose to Phuong, they just go about getting married.
Phuong's really excited and want to tell her sister immediately. Her sister will be really happy as she wants Phuong married off to a man who's provide for her. Phuong won't see the skyscrapers and Grand Canyon, but she's happy.
"I thought of the first day and Pyle sitting beside me at the Continental, with his eye on the soda-fountain across the way. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
PART I
Chapter 1
Narrator lives in room alone over Rue Catinat
Associated with a man named Pyle, has met him many times before
Phuong- meaning Phoenix waits for Pyle also. She speaks French. Phuong cannot wait in public as the police may pick her up
Phuong and Pyle are a couple
Phuong was once in a relationship with the narrator
Pyle "Had pronounced and aggravated views on what the US was doing for the world"
Narrator smokes opium pipes regularly
Phuong replies to the whether Pyle loves her and narrator's thoughts: "In Love?' Perhaps it was one of the phrases she didn't understand."
Pyle is an associate of General Thé
Narrator is not homesick? "I never wanted to go home." He's in love with …show more content…
Phuong still, yet Pyle has Phuong.
"'I wish I were Pyle,' I said aloud, but the pain was limited and bearable the opium saw to that."
Narrators name is Fowler. Fowler is a very polite gentleman, well mannered.
There seems to be no power for anyone, Police appear corrupt. "Legality was not essential in a country at war."
Different sides: Communists, French
Private armies: Hoa-Hoas, Caodists, General Thé
What is Phuong? Vigot believes she is a prostitute being paid.
Description of Pyle by Fowler: "He's a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American,' I summed him precisely up as I might have said, a blue lizard', a white elephant'."
Gives up waiting for Pyle, assumes him dead.
Pyle appears to be a young man, out of college. He was a 32 year old American, and employed in the Economic Aid Mission.
Fowler has been aged by the war.
Pyle "He was absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was determined I learnt that very soon to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world."
Phuong in a war: Pyle vs Fowler, she left Fowler for Pyle
"Everything was important to Pyle'"
Pyle is found dead under a bridge
Saigon is a very dangerous place, there're grilles on windows to keep out grenades
Vigot on Pyle: "I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm.'
God save us always,' I said, from the innocent and the good.'"
Vigot raises questions of Fowlers innocence
When IDing Pyle's body: Fowler thinks: "He looked more than ever out of place: he should have stayed at home. I saw him in a family snapshot album, riding on a dude ranch, bathing on Long Island, photographed with his colleagues in some apartment on the twenty-third floor. He belonged to the skyscraper and the express elevator, the ice-cream and the dry Martinis, milk at lunch, and chicken sandwiches on the Merchant Limited." Seems such a waste of innocent youth.
Fowler: "I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines." Work is his life
Pyle: "Before he died he had been responsible for at least fifty deaths, for it would have damaged Anglo-American relations, and the Minister would have been upset." Maybe Pyle wasn't as innocent as he appeared. How could he be responsible for these deaths if he was there to help.
Phuong stays the night then with Fowler, she doesn't show much loyalty. Fowler thinks: "am I the only one who really cared for Pyle?'"
Chapter 2
1
Flashback
"The French, who were, when all was said, fighting this war"
Pyle Before: "Pyle was quiet, he seemed modest, sometimes that first day I had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. And he was very, very serious."
"But he criticized nobody."
Pyle seems young and homesick
Fowler doesn't have an opinion on much; he just sits on the fence.
Pyle is loyal to those he respects.
Fowler is a much respected journalist; he's greeted members of Parliament, the British Prime Minister
Private Army's cont Binh Xuyen
3rd Army: General Thé, was Caodaist, Chief of Staff, "But he's taken to the hills to fight both sides, the French, the Communists "
Fowler is in love with Phuong, and doesn't want to return home.
2
Fowler doesn't know how to deal with death, after Pyle died. "One is not jealous of the dead, and it seemed easy to me that morning to take up our old life together." He has Phuong back.
Army's cont Vietminh, Vietnamese Sureté
Very mixed up war
Fowler about Pyle's death: "You can rule me out,' I said. I'm not involved. Not involved,' I repeated. It had been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action even an opinion is a kind of action."
Pyle isn't very wealthy. She has a box of possessions ("It contained her picture books.") She had "Less than a week-end visitor's at home".
Fowler was jealous of Pyle: "But, after all, he had had Phuong." If he really cared about Phuong he wouldn't be talking about her as an object, but as a person.
Fowler again: "Do you really believe,' I said, that I want to go home?'"
"Death takes people in different ways.'" Death is meaningless now
About Pyle and the 3rd force: "He said in a low voice, tense with ambiguity, He had special duties.'"
"They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about, and you gave him money and York Hardin's books on the East and said, "Go ahead. Win the East for Democracy." He never saw anything he hadn't heard in a lecture-hall and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him." Ignorant, silly, foolish. He's a young American who thinks he has Super Powers.
Chapter 3
1
Pyle is very polite and well mannered too: "I was wondering whether you and your lady,' Pyle said, would step across and join my table.'" Treats Phuong as a person, lady.
Phuong is again referred to without respect: "Who's the dame?' . Miss Phuong is a friend of Fowler's,' Pyle said stiffly. We want to know who ' Where'd he find her? You got to be careful in this town.'"
"Great Victory north-west of Hanoi, French recaptured two villages they never told us they'd lost. Heavy Vietminh casualties. Haven't been able to count their own yet but will let us know in a week or two.'" "'They wouldn't tell us about that in Hanoi. That's not a victory.'" War
Vietnam: "This was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here?"
Fowler: Í stopped our trishaw outside the Chalet and said to Phuong, Go in and find a table. I had better look after Pyle.' That was my first instinct to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence in like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." Maybe Fowler's the ignorant one?
"It may have been a trick of the lamplight, but his face looked haggard. It occurred to me that he was quite possible a virgin. Come along, Pyle,' I said. Leave them to Granger.' I saw his hand move towards his hip pocket. I really believe he intended to empty his pickets of piastres and greenbacks. A brothel.
2
Fowler's sense of humor can be quite sick. "Pyle looked at me as though I were another Granger. Suddenly I saw myself as he saw me, a man of middle age, with eyes a little bloodshot, beginning to put on weight, ungraceful in love, less noisy than Granger perhaps but more cynical, less innocent, and I saw Phuong for a moment as I had seen her first, dancing past my table at the Grand Monde in a white ball-dress, eighteen years old, watched by an elder sister who had been determined on a good European marriage." Phuong is probably young enough to be his daughter.
"It had been a long and frustrating courtship. If I could have offered marriage and a settlement everything would have been easy, and the elder sister would have slipped quietly and tactfully away whenever we were together." Fowler's immoral, and probably married, having and affair with a young girl.
"But they don't use sewing machines. There wouldn't be any electricity where they live.; she was a very literal woman." Shows the country is really very poor and Phuong doesn't know of a world any wealthier.
Fowler: "From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift." Fowler doesn't have Phuong because they are in love. He's got her because she makes him happy for the moment. If something better came along, he'd take it.
"Fowler,' he said, let's go. We've had enough, haven't we? This isn't a bit suitable for her.'" Phuong is talked about in the Third Person; she can't make decisions by herself. However, Pyle's being a thoughtful by getting her away from drunken sailors.
Chapter 4
1
"The priest shut his breviary and said, Well, that's finished.' He was a European, but not a Frenchman, for the Bishop would not have tolerated a French priest in his diocese. He said apologetically, I have come up here, you understand, for a bit of quiet from all those poor people.'" It must have been really terrible for a priest to need time to himself.
"The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking, Two can play at that game.' I too took my eyes away: we didn't' want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death. I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself." These would have been the killing fields. Fowler just looks at it and relates it back to himself, selfishly, yet others would've broken down at such an atrocity.
Fowler goes into the site of war.
Pyle has managed to follow him without aid, and survive, this in itself, is a miracle.
2
Pyle confides in Fowler that he loves Phuong and that he wants to take her away.
They decide to eventually ask Phuong, not to make the decision for her.
Fowler worries for himself, Pyle worries about what Phuong wants.
Chapter 5
1
Fowler on Pyle: "He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he might cause others. On one occasion but that was months later I lost control and thrust his foot into it, into the pain I mean, and I remember how he turned away and looked at his stained shoe in perplexity and said, I must get a shine before I see the Minister.'" Fowler's description of Pyle fits Fowler at times.
Fowler has limited feelings.
"I said, I'm going back.' Home?' Pietry asked, throwing a dour-to-one. No. England.'" Fowler no longer feels like England is home. Although his life was there, he has been away so long that everything in Vietnam is home to him.
PART II
Chapter 1
It's had to describe Fowler with this: "I was to see many times that look of pain and disappointment touch has eyes and mouth when reality didn't match the romantic ideas he cherished, or when someone he had loved or admired dropped below the impossible standard he had set." It's almost as if he knows Pyle's disappointments himself, maybe that he was once like Pyle. Yet he too has let Pyle down, just as he was let down before.
Pyle asks Phuong to marry him, after giving her a description of his love towards her.
Thomas Fowler
Pyle isn't much of a romantic; he doesn't know how to go about women.
Phuong knows more than she lets on. She just lets the men believe she's all fragile and innocent.
Chapter 2
1
History: "At least once a year the Caodaist hold a festival at the Holy See in Tanyin."
The Caodaist's have a very rich and seemingly beautiful history and culture.
"Pyle said solemnly, "a man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.'"
2
Pyle is having a really hard time dealing Phuong not loving him. He can't stand not being with her, and has decided to ask for a transfer. He wont make Phuong love him, he wants her to be happy, and can live with that.
"I told the Economic Attaché you met him Joe more or less the facts.' I suppose he thinks I'm a bastard not to let you walk off with my girl.' Oh no, he rather sided with you.'" The friendship has been ruined, because Fowler wants Phuong, he can't lose anything.
Pyle and Fowler end up stranded in a watch tower one night.
"I have read so often of people's thoughts in the moment of fear: of God, or family, or a woman. I admire their control. I thought of nothing, not even of the trap-door above me: I ceased, for those seconds, to sexist: I was fear taken neat. At the top of the ladder I banged my head because fear couldn't count steps, hear, or see. Then my head come over the earth floor and nobody shot at me and fear seeped away." This situation was so serious, one could lose their life so easily. I believe that Pyle in that situation would've been thinking of Phuong. Phuong doesn't mean that much to Fowler, nothing means that much to him.
3
"You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested.' They don't want communism.' They want enough rice,' I said. 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 around them telling them what they want.'" So the people fighting the war are fighting a war that isn't theirs. They don't want what they're being told they want. Everyone is treating them with communism.
Fowler has a wife. He doesn't want to go back to her though.
4
Pyle is much stronger than Fowler.
Fowler gets injured and Pyle comes back for him. He won't leave him. Fowler probably would've left Pyle.
Pyle saves Fowler and Fowler can only think that he "Hadn't asked to be saved." Most people would be grateful.
Chapter 3
1
"What are you afraid of?' Phuong asked, and I thought, I'm afraid of the loneliness, of the Press Club and the bed sitting room, I'm afraid of Pyle.'" Fowler seems to be concluding that he has lost Phuong.
Fowler receives a telegram from his wife. It appears that he's been know to like the company of other women.
"Her pain struck at my pain: we were back at the old routine of hurting each other. If only it were possible to love without injury fidelity isn't enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to process another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation." He really did love his wife.
"How much can you pride yourself on being degage, the reporter, not the leader-writer, and what a mess you make behind the scenes. The pother kind of war is more innocent than this. One does less damage with a mortar.'" Fowler's been hurt, so he has to hurt other. He let him get attached and involved again, as he's had past experiences, and has ended up hurt. This explains his bitterness and rules at the beginning of the novel.
He realizes that it's not a bidding race for Phuong. He can't beat Pyle, because Pyle has the genuine love for Phuong, and no money.
"I wondered how Pyle over the years would stand that hard core, for Pyle was a romantic." Pyle will survive because Pyle can love, and be loved in return.
2
p122 Description of Dominguez, a man Fowler owed his career in Vietnam to.
Dominguez once told Fowler:"I would like you to meet a friend of mine. He has a story you should listen to.'"
The motivation of Pyle to join the Third Force:
"He was talking about the old colonial powers England and France, and how you couldn't expect to win the confidence of the Asiatic. that was where America came in now with clean hands.'"
"He said a Third Force could do it. There was always a Third Force to be found free from Communism and the taint of colonialism national democracy he called it; you only had to find a leader and keep him safe from the old colonial powers.'" This is what influenced Pyle.
The real people of Vietnam wanted the Third Force, their force.
3
Fowler wants to keep Phuong at any cost to her, which is not love. Pyle wants to love and to protect Phuong. They still don't involve Phuong in the fight over her.
"Oh, I know your motives are good, they always are.' He looked puzzled and suspicious. I ish sometimes ou had a few bad motives, you might understand a luittle more about human beings. And that applies to your country too, Pyle.'"
PART III
Chapter 1
1
"You don't follow your own principles, Fowler. You're engage, like the rest of us.'" Fowler has always thought of himself as different. But really, he's just the same.
2
Phuong left Fowler
"In the moment of shock there is little pain." Fowler starts to realize that everything about Phuong, he has taken for granted.
3
Alden Pyle.
Pyle appears to have run off with Phuong. Fowler thinks he stole the "Girl he was sleeping with." From him.
Fowler starts being delusional: "This is a situation where people do behave badly."
4
Fowler leaves, he packs up and goes north as the depression from losing Phuong is overwhelming him. He tries to move on but seems to be stuck because she was taken' and he can't have anything taken' from him.
5
Trouin, a soldier: "It's not a matter of reason or justice. We all get involved in a moment of emotion and then we cannot get out. War and Love they have always been compared.'" This is Trouin's theory in response to Fowler not getting involved.'
"You are a journalist. You know better than I do that we can't win but we are professionals: we have to go on fighting till the politicians tell us tot stop. Probably they will get together and agree to the same peace that we could have had at the beginning, making nonsense of all these years.' You would not understand the nonsense, Fowler. You are not one of us.'" There are no winners in a war.
Fowler takes Trouin's advice, and goes home with the girl for sale. "But his advice did not prove sound. A man's body is limited in the acts which it can perform and mine was frozen by memory. What my hands touched that night might be more beautiful than I was used to, but we are not trapped only by beauty. She used the same perfume, and suddenly at the moment of entry the ghost of what I'd lost proved more powerful than the body stretched at my disposal. I moved away and lay on my back and desire drained out of me." Fowler is incomplete. He cannot love.
Chapter 2
1
When Fowler returns to Saigon, he's not welcomed by anyone. He's still wistful about Phuong and ask about her.
He still thinks he has a chance to get her back. Fowler's still looking to compete against Pyle.
"No.' I told myself that it wouldn't have made any difference anyway: a reprieve for one year couldn't stand up against a marriage settlement." Are you married yet?' I asked. No.' he blushed he had a great facility in blushing. As a matter of fact I'm hoping to get special leave. Then we could get married at home properly.'"
"Is it more proper when it happens at home?' Well, I thought it's difficult to say these things to you, you are so darned vynical, Thomas, but it's a mark of respect. My father and mother would e there she'd kind of enter the family. It's important in view of the past.' The past?' Is it more proper when it happens at home?' Well, I thought it's difficult to say these things to you, you are so darned vynical, Thomas, but it's a mark of respect. My father and mother would e there she'd kind of enter the family. It's important in view of the past.' The past?' You know what I mean. I wouldn't want to leave her behind there with any stigma ' would you leave her behind?' I guess so. My mother's a wonderful woman she's take her around, introduce her, you know, kind of fit her it. She'd help her to get a home ready for me.'" A home ready for me, Pyle is self-centered also but the key point he makes is that he "RESPECTS" her.
"I didn't know whether to feel sorry for Phuong or not she had looked forward so to the skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty, but she had so little idea of all they would involve Strangely I found myself saying: Go easy with her, Pyle. Don't force things. She can be hurt like you or me.'" Fowler finally wishes them well.
2
A bomb goes off in the Rue Catinat. "And a man without his legs lay twitching at the edge of the ornamental gardens.'"
Fowler goes looking for Phuong and bumps into Pyle. "Pyle,' I said, for Christ's sake, where's your Legation pass? We've got to get across. Phuong's in the milk-bar.' No, no,' he said. Pyle, she is. She always goes there. At eleven thirty. We've got to find her.' She isn't there, Thomas.' How do you know? Where's your card?' I warned her not to go.' Fowler realizes that Pyle is responsible for the deaths of these innocent lives. He questions him about the lack of American losses; the American's were all warned. Fowler shows genuine concern and care still for Phuong.
"The dead were left to their owners, for one can own the dead as one owns a chair. A woman sat on the ground with what was left of her baby in her lap; with a kind of modesty she had covered it with her straw peasant hat." The sadness of these losses by these people just cannot be imagined by the people who're causing this.
"Pyle said, It's awful.' He looked at the wet on his shoes and said in a sick voice, what's that?' Blood' I said. Haven't you ever seen it before?' He said I must get them cleaned before I see the Minister.' Pyle is more concerned about his shoes than the crime he's caused. What is wrong with him? No sane person would be like this.
"This is the hour when the place is always full of women and children it's the shopping hour. Why choose that of all hours?' He said weekly, there was to have been a parade.' And you hoped to catch a few colonels. But the parade was cancelled yesterday, Pyle.'" Fowler shows the feelings he has for the crime. He gets involved at the injustice of the whole situation and that Pyle should've know better. There's no reason to lose innocent lives.
He tells Pyle: "you've put General Thé on the map all right, Pyle. You've go the Third Force and National Democracy all over your right shoe. Go home to Phuong and tell her about your heroic dead there are a few dozen less of her people to worry about.'" Fowler doesn't understand how Pyle could do this.
"Innocence is a kind of insanity." This has summed up Pyle throughout the novel. He does crazy things because he doesn't realize the repercussions; he believes he's doing good.
Pyle's only response to this is: "Thé wouldn't have done this. I'm sure he wouldn't. somebody deceived him. The communists '" Pyle still stays loyal to General Thé, just making excuses because he can't be let down by those he respects.
Pyle "was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance."
PART IV
Chapter 1
Back to after Pyle's death
Vigot visits Fowler once more and spots the book Fowler took from Pyle's place to remind him of his friend. When asked "Who is this York Harding?'" Fowler replies, "He's the man you are looking for, Vigot. He killed Pyle at long range.'"
Vigot believes that Fowler has something to do with Pyle's murder. He thinks that they met up. Fowler keeps denying this.
Vigot's reason is "Because of the dog.' Vigot said. And the mud between its toes?' It wasn't mud. It was cement. You see, somewhere that night, when it was following Pyle, it stepped into wet cement. I remembered that on the ground-floor of the apartment there are builders at work they are still at work. I passed them tonight as I came in. they work long hours in this country.'" The whole mystery seems to be filling in. Vigot knows that Fowler didn't murder Pyle but wants to know why they met the night of Pyle's murder.
"When Vigot was gone there was still an hour to wait for Phuong and living company. It was strange how disturbed I had been by Vigot's visit. It was as though a poet had brought me his work to criticize and through some careless action I had destroyed it. I was a man without a vocation one cannot seriously consider journalism as a vocation, but I could recognize a vocation in another. Now that Vigot was gone to close his uncompleted file, I wished I had the courage to call him back and say, You are right. I did see Pyle the night he died.'" Why would Fowler have seen Pyle the night he died unless there was something not legal about the whole affair?
Chapter 2
1
After the bombings
Fowler goes to see Monsieur Heng, confiding that Pyle caused the bombings.
"General Thé is not a very controlled character.' And bombs aren't for boys from Boston. Who is Pyle's chief, Heng?' I have the impression that Mr Pyle is very much his own master.' Fowler is trying to find out who is responsible for the order of the horrific bombings. Pyle's beginning to look as though he's quite high up in this army.
Monsieur Heng suggests to Fowler to publish an article on Pyle to stop him. "My paper's not interested in General Thé. They are only interested in your people, Heng.' You really want Mr Pyle stopped, Mr Fowler?' ;If you'd seen him, Heng. He stood there and said it was all a sad mistake, there should have been a parade. He said he'd have to get his shoes cleaned before he saw the Minister.'" Due to Pyle's lack of guilt at the situation, it looks as though Fowler is getting someone to deal with Pyle.
Monsieur Heng suggests "if you would invite him to dinner tonight at the Vieux Moulin. Between eight thirty and nine thirty.'" And Monsieur Heng adds, "We would talk to him on the way,'"
Fowler is taking a …show more content…
side.
"Sooner of later,' Heng said, and I was reminded of Captain Trouin speaking in the opium house, one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.'" You can't ignore what goes on in a war if you are human.
2
"I was glad to get your note, Thomas. This morning I thought you were mad at me.' Perhaps I was. It wasn't a pretty sight.'"
Pyle has seen General Thé in the meantime: "Saw him? Is he in Saigon? I suppose he came to see how his bomb worked.' That's in confidence, Thomas. I dealt with him very severely.' He spoke like the captain of a school-team who has found one of his boys breaking his training. All the same I asked him with a certain hope, Have you thrown him over?'" Pyle talks like he's the boss. Just General Thé is the face of the whole Third Force.
Pyle tells Fowler that in a week they'll have forgotten it all. That the whole mess will have blown over and they can still be friends. He doesn't feel guilty because he's wired the relatives of the dead. Now Pyle can go home to Phuong and live his life.
"I drive through the streets and I care not a damn,
The people they stare and they ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money."
Pyle knows his life is in danger yet carrying a gun "It wouldn't' do any good if they wanted to get me, they always could.'"
Fowler has changed, yet Pyle's been so wrapped up in himself and his devious Third Force, that he hasn't noticed.
"There's always a point of change,' I said. Some moment of emotion ' You haven't reached it yet. I doubt if you every will. And I'm not likely to change either except with death,' he added merrily. Not even with this morning? Mightn't that change a man's views?' They were only war casualties,' he said. It was a pity, but you can't always hit your target. Anyway they died in the right cause.'"
Pyle still doesn't see anything wrong with the people he's killed.
"I wanted him to go away quickly and die.'" Fowler seems disgusted in his friend. It's like he hates himself for not seeing quicker what Pyle was doing, Fowler feels responsible because he didn't stop him.
Fowler is too moral to not feel guilt. "There was no harm in giving him that one chance. don't mind being late,'" Fowler's guilt about what'll happen to his friend is setting in, and he's trying to get him to avoid the time of his
death.
"I handed back the decision to that somebody in whom I didn't believe: You can intervene if You want to: a telegram on his desk: a message from the Minister. You cannot exit unless you have the power to alter the future.'" Pyle doesn't have the power to go against his beliefs to change the future.
3
"Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist in terms of quantity and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again."
Fowler sees Granger again. "Don't go Fowler. Haven't you got a heart? I can't talk to those Froggies.' You're drunk.' I've had two glasses of champagne, that's all, and wouldn't you be drunk in my place? I've got to go north.' What's wrong with that?' Oh, I didn't tell you, did I? I keep on thinking everyone knows. I got a cable this morning from my wife.' Yes?' My son's got polio. He's bad.'"
Granger can't get out of going north for work to see his son because it's work. He has to cover for others. Fowler offers to do it for him, which is really kind. It shows that Fowler does have a heart and feelings.
Chapter 3
Phuong and Fowler are living their lives together.
Fowler gets a telegram from his wife, who's extremely angry at him.
She's divorcing him.
Fowler gives Phuong the happy ending she wants.
Fowler doesn't propose to Phuong, they just go about getting married.
Phuong's really excited and want to tell her sister immediately. Her sister will be really happy as she wants Phuong married off to a man who's provide for her. Phuong won't see the skyscrapers and Grand Canyon, but she's happy.
"I thought of the first day and Pyle sitting beside me at the Continental, with his eye on the soda-fountain across the way. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."