The Quiet American - Greene and the Cold War Mindset Anonymous 12th Grade

Set during the throws of the Cold War offensive and the threat of the domino theory in Asia, Graham Greene's fiction annexes his experiences as a war correspondent in Indochina during the years 1951 – 1954 into his works, impart reasoning and voice into a world filled with conflicting values and dangerous games. His novel The Quiet American (1955) supersedes the growing dehumanisation of the fifties and sixties, wherein the characterisation of Alden Pyle as the ignorant face of democracy presents the conundrum of action versus inaction. Greene thus explores the realms of grey beneath good and evil, and the paradox of conflict.

Presented as a parallel to the young, ignorant soldiers of WWI, Pyle represents humanities search for gratification and purpose (“To do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world”) inevitably concluding in harm to both himself and those around him. This is expressed through “God save us always… from the innocent and the good”, and “We didn’t even wait to see our victims struggling to survive, but climbed and made for home”. There is a sense of disjunction between the actions taken and the person taking them; a lack of regret or understanding of other human beings, which...