The Search for Control in an Exotic World

"The mysterious is always attractive. People will always follow a vail" (Jarrett, The House of Gold). Exoticism is mystery, seduction, escape... the unknown. In Graham Greene's novel, The Quiet American, exoticism is expressed through people, places, scents, sights, objects and thoughts. Exoticism is pungently used throughout this novel to accentuate the fundamental differences between the two most prominent characters: Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle. Some people seek-out exoticism as an escape, whereas others try to transform and mold its expression into something more familiar.

Graham Greene's novel, The Quiet American, is a story about the unseemly friendship between an older, English journalist named Thomas Fowler, and Alden Pyle, a young American government-worker. The story is set in Vietnam in the 1950's, during a time of mass turmoil because of Communist, French, and American influences. Fowler is a lonely, disenchanted, sarcastic, morbid, older English man. He has been living with his mistress, Phuong, a very young Vietnamese woman for two years, despite his Catholic wife who lives in London and who will not grant him a divorce. Fowler is content with his life in Vietnam and does not want to return to England.

Vietnam is a country filled with exotic sights, sounds and scents:
"[T]he gold of the rice-fields under a flat late sun: the fishers' fragile cranes hovering over the fields like mosquitoes; the cups of tea on an old abbot's platform, with his bed and his commercial calendars, his buckets and broken cups and the junk of a lifetime washed up around his chair: the mollusc hats of the girls repairing the road where a mine had burst: the gold and the young green and the bright dresses of the south, and in the north the deep browns and the black clothes and the circle of enemy mountains and the drone of planes." (25)
However, Pyle will never enjoy this exoticism as Fowler has.

Alden Pyle is "the quiet American," in stark distinction from his boisterous, ill-mannered, drunk fellow Americans. Although Pyle is shy and respectful, he is quite confident about his ideas and values. He sincerely thinks that he can improve Vietnam with his naive theories. He even attempts to "save" Phuong from Fowler, in quite the same way as he attempts to save Vietnam.

Phuong is the novel's third most important character. She is described as a young Vietnamese woman who comes from a good family but only has her sister left to guide her and lookout for her. Pyle eventually manages to persuade her to leave Fowler to be with him. All she seems to be interested in is her own security. Throughout the novel, Phuong is personified as a symbol of Vietnam for Pyle and Fowler.

These two men are distinguished by their different approach and response towards exoticism. However, they are still in search for the same thing -- a sense of security.

Graham Greene once said that "just as in some of Fowler's reactions in 'The Quiet American' there are reactions of mine..." (Franklin 104). Fowler is inevitably a personification of Greene, and just like him, Fowler is a middle-aged, cynical Englishman. He works as a journalist, but prefers to be called a "reporter," because it connotes a sense of detachment to an opinion; having an opinion is something that he tries to avoid. He relishes the company of his mistress because they have been together two years and understand each other's habits -- Phuong knows how to take care of Fowler, mainly by preparing his more-than-daily doses of opium, while Fowler knows where Phuong is at almost any hour of the day. This allows Fowler a sense of security. He is only half-interested in his "reportage," and seems to continue as a journalist only because it pays his bills and prevents him from being sent back to England. He would much rather not go back to England because he is trying to avoid the problems he would encounter there. Fowler is not very fond of Americans, but is attracted to Pyle, for he is quite different then them. He is a "quiet American."

Alden Pyle is a young Bostonian who is passionate about his work, which is to secretly create a "Third Force" in Vietnam. His "Third Force" is supposed to be American intervention which is neither Communist or French colonialism, but it is a secret mission, therefore we are not let in to what its ultimate purpose is. He naively believes that his (and his country's) set of morals, values and political views are ideal for Vietnam. He also believes that by marrying Phuong, he can "save" her, but he does not really try to understand her and her differences. He only sees what he wants to.
"[Alden Pyle] is presented as naive and brash, an interventionist with no understanding of the cultural implications of his mission to rescue Vietnam from the unhealthy influence of Communism and French colonialism. Pyle is surfeited with a sense of moral duty but he lacks knowledge of the country he is supposed to rescue. His information has been gleaned by Communism to American books by York Harding on the challenge posed by Communism to American democratic values in Asia. With his simpleminded intellect Pyle wishes to 'improve things,' to spread the message of Christian democracy, and to halt the menace of red atheism. But Pyle does not see Vietnam." (Melling par.6)

The fundamental difference between these two men is in the way they face exoticism when confronted with it. Many different people see exoticism in many different lights. Exoticism is defined as "something which is attractively strange or remarkably unusual" by the Oxford English Dictionary (The Imperial Archive par.1). For Graham Huggan exoticism is surprise, uncertainty, the unexpected and mystery (par. 6). To Victor Segalen, exoticism is "the desire for the Other," a "state of innocence;" it is also "[a] pleasure [that is] connected with the experience of the shock [that] affords the subject no mastery," and also "[something that] partially elude[s] [our] grasp" (Michel 2, 10). To Graham Greene, travel (to distant places, therefore exoticism) "[I]s... an escape from oneself, and from the intolerable burdens of memory" (Christie 734).

For Thomas Fowler, as with Graham Greene, exoticism is escape and freedom: "England is to me the scene of my failure" (80). It is escape and freedom from financial troubles and family troubles (72). Exoticism is a way to avoid all of his problems -- it is a temporary retirement from life in which he does not have to think about his failures in England or have an opinion about things, as he so often likes to remind us. He leads a double life -- the one in Vietnam being far more attractive for the false sense of freedom and security it allows him. Even as a journalist he insists over and over again that he has no opinion and that he would rather not form one. Perhaps thinking and memories have become too painful for him and are too much of a burden to him and he refuses to face the reality which both would inflict on him. He refuses to face the problem of the failure of his marriage and of his financial troubles by staying in Vietnam, where nothing can come to haunt him.

Exoticism is not mystery, excitement or surprise to Fowler; it is quite the opposite. It is a sense of security over his life that living in England would not be able to afford him. He knows exactly where Phuong is at any time of the day, which gives him a sense of control over her, and he does not have to have any opinions about anything, therefore he stays neutral and un-bothered by thoughts that might disturb his peace-of-mind.

Phuong also affords Fowler a sense of certainty: "I couldn't bear the uncertainty [of love] any longer... Then I came East." Pyle asks, "And found Phuong?" and Fowler replies "Yes" (103). Although Phuong eventually leaves Fowler for Pyle, it is his own doing. Fowler is not in love with Phuong in the traditional sense, but rather, relishes her company because he is afraid of dying alone: "I wouldn't know what to think about all day long," he says, if he did not have Phuong with him (105).

Alden Pyle and Fowler differ in the ways that they react and deal with exoticism, but they are both striving towards the same goal -- a sense of security. To Pyle, exoticism is the same as to Graham Huggan: mystery, surprise, uncertainty and the unexpected. Fowler is content with playing a passive role towards exoticism because it affords him a sense of security and escape. But Pyle plays a rather active role in trying to gain control over exoticism because he is afraid of it. He is characterized as a young, naive man who is very sure of his ideals, values and morals and feels that he must impose them on Vietnam and its people. But this shows us an underlying insecurity on his part. If one is sure about their views, they do not try to convert others. Conversion means that one is afraid of what is alien and uncontrollable because it might oppose one's own views and disturb them. Pyle wants to remake the world into his and America's image so that he may better control and manage it. As Victor Segalen implies, Westerners have a "fear of the other" (Michel 4). He does not try to think critically about what he is doing to the Vietnamese with his Third Force, because he does not care: Fowler mentions that Pyle was "paying no attention to words he didn't like" (33). All Pyle cares about is validating his own views -- feeling secure about his own views.

Pyle ultimately wants to control the unknown. He is afraid of its mystery, of its difference from him and his views; he is much afraid of the unexpected and prefers the expected and certainty, much like Fowler does. He wants to recreate Vietnam into America, but he refuses to think, just like Fowler. That is why he only listens to one man, York Harding, who is the one man who validates Pyle's thoughts.

And to Pyle, Phuong is the incarnation of Vietnam. He wants Phuong, but only to change her into something he is more comfortable with -- a western version of a woman: "I saw that she was doing her hair differently, allowing it to fall black and straight over her shoulders. I remembered that Pyle had once criticized the elaborate hairdressing which she thought became the daughter of a mandarin" (12). He thinks that this is actually what Vietnam and Phuong want, without any appreciation of the differences. He imposes his sense of the world without trying to understand other people's points of view. This is what is so frightening about Pyle, and what makes him so dangerous; dangerous enough for Fowler to eventually have an opinion and help in his assassination.

As Huggan says: "[I]t is the post-colonial imperative to de-mystify or 'de-exoticise' non-European cultures" because "to domesticate the exotic fully would neutralize its capacity to create surprises" (The Imperial Archive par.6). Both Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler are after this same goal, but Fowler does not need to domesticate the exotic to gain control, rather he embraces the exotic because it allows him an escape from reality and therefore a sense of security. But Pyle needs to domesticate the exotic so that he may feel safer because he has more control.


You can take an active role, like Alden Pyle, and try to domesticate exoticism to validate your own views so that you may have a sense of security. You can take a passive role, like Thomas Fowler, to escape reality and also feel a false sense of security. But whether active or passive, and whether you think you can control exoticism or not, it always ends up controlling you. After all, it is we that incessantly move towards exoticism, not the other way around.