How does The Quiet American use literary devices to show lack of transparency in authoritarian governments?

Some literary devices that Graham Greene uses in The Quiet American to demonstrate the lack of accountability and transparency within authoritarian governments include point of view, flashbacks, and symbolism.

Greene’s novel is told through the perspective of the journalist Thomas Fowler. Using first-person narration, Greene filters almost everything, including the machinations of the government in Vietnam, through Fowler. With this literary device in tow, Greene explicitly addresses corruption in the government early on in the novel when Fowler declares, “Legality was not essential in a country at war.”

Immediately following this nefarious statement, Greene uses another literary device, the flashback, to illustrate the clandestine character of authoritarian governments. Fowler remembers a nameless man who had “suddenly and inexplicably lost his cook.” Fowler speculates about what might have happened to the cook. Perhaps he joined the communists, became a member of a private army, turned into a pimp, or folded under questioning. Whatever occurred, none of the scenarios come across as overtly honest or honorable. Thus, the flashback reflects the intrigue and scheming of the unjust government.

A third literary device to consider is symbolism. One could argue that Fowler’s deceptive relationship with his wife and Phuong can be read as representing the underhanded dealings between the iniquitous government and its people.

How does The Quiet American show lack of accountability in authoritarian governments?

In The Quiet American, Graham Greene reflects on the situation in Vietnam during the days when there was conflict between the French forces colonizing the country and the communists that were trying to take over. The novel centers around an American agent, Alden Pyle, and a British journalist, Thomas Fowler, who have very different ideas about how politics in Vietnam should play out.

What Pyle doesn't completely realize as he promotes the idea of a "third force," a power other than the French or the communists, in Vietnam is that authoritarianism in any form is all about deception and violence and a lack of accountability. Pyle has a difficult time accepting this even after General The, an anticommunist whom Pyle thinks might be the third force, orders the detonation of a car bomb on a busy public street. Many innocent people are killed, but Pyle believes that the general simply made a mistake. He thinks that he can talk to him and sort everything out. Pyle, however, is rather naïve, because the general doesn't have to answer to him and will not. There is no accountability or transparency in the general and his potential regime.

Fowler knows this, and he believes that Pyle's intervention will actually turn even more dangerous. Therefore, Fowler contacts the communists about Pyle. Yet Fowler, too, is naïve. He wants Pyle stopped, but Pyle ends up dead, murdered by the communists, who also lack any sort of accountability or transparency.

How does The Quiet American show the lack of accountability in authoritarian governments?

In order to answer this prompt, you might consider sections of the book which deal with deception, the loss of life, and a loss of innocence.

One such section of text appears in part 3, chapter 1, section 4. Fowler decides to take a trip to Haiphong with Captain Trouin as a means of "killing time and thought" and avoiding his own inner conflicts. After bombing the "enemy" numerous times, Trouin turns his weapons on a single sampan which floats near fields of rice:

Down we went again, away from the gnarled and fissured forest towards the river, flattening out over the neglected rice fields, aimed like a bullet at one small sampan on the yellow stream. The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks: we didn't even wait to see our victims struggling to survive but climbed and made for home. I thought again as I had thought when I saw the dead child at Phat Diem, "I hate war." There had been something so shocking in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey—we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world's dead.

This passage begs readers to question who the true "enemy" really is. Is it the government? If so, which one? Who demonstrates authoritarian rule in this passage? Why inflict such devastation on civilians? Even worse—who will ever know of or mourn this loss? Captain Trouin moves on from the event with a sense of emotionless detachment, telling Fowler that he really can't miss the "wonderful" sunset. As he flies away, the "wound of murder cease[s] to bleed," demonstrating the insignificance of human life within the context of war.

Particularly in the last third of this work, there are numerous passages which deal with similar feelings of loss and deception. Consider how a lack of accountability blurs the lines of justice as you read these passages.