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Summary

The novel opens with Thomas Fowler waiting for Alden Pyle to come to his apartment. Pyle was supposed to come at 10 p.m., but it is now after midnight. Restless from waiting, Fowler leaves the apartment. In the street, Fowler happens upon his former Vietnamese lover, Phuong, who has left him to be with Pyle. Fowler invites her to come up and wait for Pyle with him.

Back in Fowler’s apartment, Phuong prepares his opium pipe. Fowler asks her if Pyle is in love with her. She does not answer him directly, so he changes tack and asks her if Pyle still refuses to smoke opium. She confirms that he does not smoke. Referencing a Vietnamese superstition that a lover who smokes opium will always return, Fowler tells Phuong that she had better make Pyle smoke if she wants him to come back to her.

Fowler takes his first pulls of smoke and tries not to worry about Pyle, reasoning that the American wants to avoid a late-night call. He tells Phuong that Pyle probably won’t be coming, and he asks her to stay the night. She does not respond. After smoking a second pipe, someone knocks at the door. The late-night caller is a Vietnamese policeman who commands Fowler to come to the Sûreté (the French investigat bureau) immediately. Fowler assents without question, noting to himself that the police exercise their power unscrupulously in wartime.

Fowler takes Phuong with him to the Sûreté, where the French inspector Vigot is waiting for them. Vigot asks Fowler when he first met Pyle. Foler recalls their first meeting, but he does not tell the story to Vigot. Fowler had been sitting at an outdoor café at the Continental Hotel when Pyle walked up to him and asked to join him, explaining that he was new to Saigon. Pyle startled at the sound of a car exhaust sputtering, worried that it was a grenade. Fowler assured him it was not a grenade, but he still enjoyed making a joke at Pyle’s expense.

Fowler realizes that Pyle must be dead, and Vigot confirms his suspicion. Without the inspector asking, Fowler claims that he is not guilty, and he offers a detailed account of his activities that evening between 6 and 10 p.m. He also confirms Phuong’s whereabouts.

Vigot explains that Pyle’s body was found in the water under a bridge next to the Vieux Moulin restaurant. He also indicates that he does not feel sorry about Pyle’s death

Vigot asks Fowler to identify the body. Fowler thinks to himself that this is part of an old-school French investigative technique meant to see if the criminal breaks down and betrays himself when confronted with his crime. Fowler identifies the body as Pyle’s, and in his mind, he tells himself that he is innocent.

After Vigot lets them go, Fowler and Phuong walk back toward the apartment. Phuong, whose English is poor and still doesn’t understand what has happened, asks Fowler where Pyle is and what the police wanted. Fowler explains in French that Pyle has been assassinated. She agrees to stay the night, and they fall asleep together as they had when they were intimate together. Fowler wakes up in the night wondering if he was the only one who cared about Pyle.

Analysis

The Quiet American is told from Fowler’s perspective, and the novel’s opening chapter introduces the reader to his narrative voice. The reader immediately sees that Fowler thinks a lot.

The narrative has many small digressions from the events of the story that illuminate Fowler’s feelings and opinions about those events. The back-and-forth movement between Fowler’s account of events and his reflections on them is important to note because it mirrors the novel’s larger narrative structure. Instead of presenting the events in strictly chronological order, the novel moves back and forth between two timelines: the aftermath of Pyle’s death, and the events leading up to it. Another characteristic of Fowler’s storytelling is that he keeps a lot of information to himself. One example of this comes when Fowler recollects his first meeting with Pyle in full detail in his mind, but he does not tell Vigot. The reader comes to understand that Fowler initially found Pyle to be young and inexperienced. Vigot, however, . Fowler’s penchant for withholding information often drives the story. In this case, his lack of cooperation slows Vigot’s investigation, forcing him to pursue Fowler in the weeks after Pyle’s death.

Fowler also withholds information from the reader, indicating that he may be an unreliable narrator. Taken as a whole, the events of the novel illustrate how Fowler becomes involved in plotting Pyle’s death. However, at no point in the opening chapter does Fowler directly allude to his involvement. This creates a powerful sense of irony that will become evident to the reader only after finishing the book. This irony is perhaps most clearly expressed in the novel’s opening sentence, in which Fowler explains how Pyle never showed up for a scheduled visit at his apartment. At first glance, it appears as if Pyle has broken his promise. As the events of the novel unfold, however, the reader realizes that Pyle did not betray Fowler, but the other way around. For this reason, even though the reader has privileged access to Fowler’s inner mind, the way Fowler tells his story allows him to misdirect the reader.

Although Fowler does not mention his involvement in Pyle’s death explicitly, there are clues in this first chapter. First, Fowler declares his innocence once Vigot confirms that Pyle is dead, and he does so without Vigot making any accusations against him. Furthermore, when Vigot asks him to identify Pyle’s body, Fowler steels himself against what he thinks is a psychological tactic meant to get the guilty to confess. Fowler identifies the body, and he tells himself “again” that he is “innocent.” Fowler’s need insist on his innocence both to Vigot and to himself alerts the reader to a sense of anxiety, even if it doesn’t confirm his guilt.

The first chapter also introduces one of the novel’s main themes: Pyle’s “innocence.” When Fowler first meets Pyle, he teases the American and characterizes him as innocent. Significantly, innocent does not mean the same thing as ignorant. On the novel’s second page, Fowler describes Phuong as ignorant because she is actively disinterested in her country’s sociopolitical situation. By contrast, Pyle is knowledgeable about Vietnam’s political and ideological conflicts, and he is also fully committed to effecting change in the region. What Pyle lacks, however, is experience. Fowler notes that Pyle’s knowledge comes from books. Pyle is therefore more naïve about the region than he recognizes, and he is innocent because he does not understand his own naïveté. As Fowler’s story will go on to show, Pyle’s innocence proves dangerous, and ironically, the damage he eventually inflicts makes his innocence a form of guilt. It is also ironic that Fowler applies the same word to himself in this chapter. Fowler’s use of this word is significant because it suggests a similarity between the two men that Fowler himself does not seem to be aware of.


Next section Part One, Chapter 2

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