Innocence and Experience: An Examination of The Quiet American in the Light of Other Texts Author: Wei-min Sun, General Education Center of Far East College ABSTRACT In Graham Greene s The Quiet American, there seems to be a poignant contrast between Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler, the two principal characters in the novel. These two figures, however, are not simply contradictory to each other or even mutually exclusive. In fact, there is an ambivalence or attraction between them. In this study, such a relationship is examined from the perspective of the contrast between innocence and experience, a theme frequently discussed in other texts. Keyword: essentialism, empiricism, intention, deed, idealism, skepticism, existentialism, terrorism 13
Reading Greene s The Quiet American, one is from time to time reminded of many other texts, literary or non-literary, regarding especially the contrast between innocence and experience. Such a contrast has been much discussed since the dawn of human civilization. Plato, for instance, is sometimes regarded as the spokesman for the metaphysics now known as essentialism, while Aristotle, empiricism. For Plato, one s earthly effort to attain the perfect, eternal truth, or the Forms or Ideas, is mere recollection, while Aristotle grants natural phenomena validity, putting emphasis on the Changing, the Becoming. Laozi praises the simplicity of the infant and associates it with Tao, reminiscent of Christ s teaching concerning children and heaven. In Genesis, the Fall of mankind is usually considered one from the state of innocence. In Chinese mythology, the joyous Hun dun (Chaos) dies immediately after Shun and Hun, two best friends of his, kindly yet foolishly endow him with eyes, ears, nostrils and the mouth, the seven holes open to the world of experience. In The Quiet American, the contrast between Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler may not be totally parallel to the contrasts between innocence and experience just mentioned; however, it seems more or less related to them. In this essay, I try to discuss the relationship between Pyle and Fowler from such a perspective, seeing the two principal figures not simply as contradictory to each other. Let s begin with the lines Greene chooses as the epigraphs for his novel. Here I discuss only the one quoted from Byron s Don Juan: This is the patent age of new inventions For killing bodies and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions. (1. 1049-51) As Allot points out, the stanza which these lines are in follows immediately after a stanza where Byron indulges in some high-spirited satirical junketing at the expense of America. Along with even more libelous statements, Byron suggests that it might be a good thing if the population of America were to be thinned. With war, or plague, or famine any way, So that civilization they may learn. It is hard to ignore the bearing of this remark on Greene s presentation of Alden Pyle, which is also in keeping, both in theme and tone, with Byron s frequent emphasis in his satirical verse on the connection between good intentions and, so to speak, the road to hell. (68) Aylett s suggestion regarding the connection between good intentions and the road to hell is basically sound, if one is careful enough not to mistake such a possible connection for a formula of reduction. It is certain that a good intention may or may not be followed by ill deeds. As it is followed by ill deeds, the good intention may be analogous to the road to hell. It is only one possibility among possibilities. The road not to hell, however, should hardly be the ill deeds. In other words, the alternative of the good intention is not the ill intention but the comprehensive scrutiny and knowledge of one s intention, which, as Greene suggests in his novel, seems rather impossible. Such an impossibility to distinguish the good intention from the ill one is not so difficult to understand. In brief, the circle of human consciousness is much limited. In Stevens s words, When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. ( Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird 14
35-7 ) Modern psychology has also demonstrated the immensity and complexity of the unconscious realm of the human mind. How can one truly know the nature of one s intention, once knowing something about Lacan, Freud, or even Schopenhauer? When discussing the interplay of the literary text and the reader, Holland s analysis may equally and justly be applied to the conscious or unconscious disguise of unacceptable intentions: The work is enjoyable because by devious formal means it transforms our deepest anxieties and desires into socially acceptable meanings. If it did not soften these desires by its form and language, allowing us sufficient mastery of and defiance against them, it would prove unacceptable. (Eaglet on 182) Blake, rather than Byron, is the romantic poet I recall as I read The Quiet America. In The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, Blake deals with the two contrary states of the human soul, the childlike, primitive state of faith, contentment and happiness, and the knowing, adult state of corruption, pain and despair. The Chimney Sweeper in The Songs of Innocence, for instance, counters the poem of the same title in The Songs of Experience: When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!" So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dare, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said, " Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! -- That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and let them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind; And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He d have God for his father, and never want joy. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm. (in The Songs of Innocence ) A little black thing in the snow, Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe! Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--"They are both gone up to the church to pray. "Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. "And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, Who make up a heaven of our misery." (in The Songs of Experience )Pyle, who has been absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West and has determined to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world (18) even before he arrives at Indochina, is, in a sense, a good boy like the chimney sweeper with a vision and a faith. Nevertheless, Pyle is a young and ignorant and silly (31) romantic (120) with idealism (156) to Fowler, the cynical British correspondent whose skepticism, reluctance and weary tone make him one of the singers of the songs of experience: You can rule me out, I said. I am not 15
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 I took no action. (28) Fowler s depiction of himself here links him not only with the characters in many of Hemingway s novels, such as Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms, but also with Eliot s Perforce in his interior monologue: There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands. That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.( The Love Song of J. Alfred Perforce 26-34 )Like Fowler, Prufrock s disengagement or inaction is largely because of his fear of the consequences. Prufrock is an experienced, sophisticated person who has known them all already, known them all ( The Love Song 49), and yet his sad knowledge of life prevents him from further engagement. Fowler fears action for the similar reason I was practiced. I have lived all this before (145), he says convincing himself, by quoting Pascal, that Both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault. They are both in the wrong. True course is not to wager at all (138). Furthermore, Fowler s refusal to be involved, or to act, reminds us of the existentialist stress on action. Since, contrary to the traditional view of idealist philosophy, there is no transcendent Absolute or First Cause,[E]ach individual man is what he makes of himself by a succession of actions undertaken in complete freedom of choice in a situation which constitutes his particular physical and historical context. (Horton 466) In the end, however, Fowler takes a side and arranges Pyle s death, believing that the innocent (163) must be restrained (174). It is questionable that such an action is taken for saving a lot of lives (174) of innocent people. Fowler s decision to act may not be so selfless and detached as it seems, because it results in not only betrayal and murder but also considerable material advantage to himself (Allot 70). Miller s praise of Fowler s taking steps seems naïve enough, once we recognize Fowler s scarred frailty and moral uncertainty (Whitfield 68): For all his coolness and affection for Pyle, Fowler s horror at Pyle s stupidity, proceeding from his innocence, and the brutalism that lies in wait under his sentimentality moves Fowler to take steps. He is changed from observer to agent, and confronts the truth that all politics has meaning only in terms of one s willingness to become engaged, at whatever level; that in the face of such horror one must, as a moral being, crept the need to act. Fowler acts to stop Pyle s terrorism. (112) Pyle and Fowler are not so mutually exclusive as they appear to be. During the course of the novel, there even seems to be a mutual attraction between the two. For instance, Fowler has confessed, more than once, that he is in fact not superior, intelligently or morally, to Pyle: Oh, I was right about the facts, but wasn t he right too to be young and mistaken, and wasn t he perhaps a better man for a girl to spend her life with? (156) Sometimes we have a kind of love for our enemies and sometimes we feel hate for our 16
friends. (176)There was an unreality in both our arguments. (176)She would never see New England now or learn the secrets of Canasta. Perhaps she would never know security: what right had I to value her less than the dead bodies in the square? 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. (183) Such an attraction. or ambivalence, between Pyle and Fowler is perhaps more clearly seen in the light of Blake s poetry, as mentioned earlier, or in the light of Yeast s theory of warring elements or opposites. A similar idea can be found in Buddhism, too, though underlining the Third Party, that is, the happy marriage of the state of innocence and that of experience. Works Cited [1] Allot, Miriam. The Moral Situation in The Quiet American. Graham Greene. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987. 65-78. [2] Eaglet on, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. [3] Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. London: Penguin, 1973. [4] Horton, Rod W., and Herbert W. Edwards. Backgrounds of American Literary Thought. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. [5] Miller, R. H. Understanding Graham Greene. Columbia: South Carolina UP, 1990. [6] Whitfield, Stephen J. Limited Engagement: The Quiet American as History. Journal of American Studies, 30, I. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 65-86. 17
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