The Sympathizer

  Historical Background 

 In 1973, Richard Nixon, the president of the United States stopped the direct military intervention in Vietnam. He adopted a policy of strengthening the South Vietnamese Army and phasing out the deployed US military troops in Vietnam. During the Cold War, the communist North Vietnam was backed by Russia and China. To prevent the spread of Communism into South Vietnam and the neighbouring states of Laos and Cambodia, America supported the pro-capitalist pro-democratic South Vietnam with military supplies and funds. From 1955 until the Fall of Saigon in 1975, the American troops were present in South Vietnam waging many battles in Vietnam. However, in April 1975, Gerald Ford, the president of the United States gave orders for a complete evacuation of the U.S. troops and American citizens out of Saigon.

 Introduction to the novel

           "All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory" 

                                                           -Viet Thanh Nguyen- 

Through the eyes of an unnamed protagonist, mentioned as the narrator or captain, the author Viet Thanh Nguyen, views the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, and the events that followed from a Vietnamese point of view. It is a historical narrative of the Vietnam War as suffered and endured by the vanquished Vietnamese who were displaced from Vietnam. The novel is a powerful critique of the Western narrative of American success in the Vietnam War as perceived and propagated through academia and Hollywood films. 

 The author, Viet Thanh Nguyen won numerous accolades including The Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016 for his debut novel ‘The Sympathizer’ published in 2015. A sequel to this novel ‘The Committed’ was published in 2021. A televised serial version of ‘The Sympathizer’ directed by Park Chan-wook, a reputed South Korean filmmaker is available on HBO. 

 The Plot 

The novel begins with a confession letter written by the narrator in a dingy prison cell in North Vietnam. As a prisoner, his reeducation program starts with this confession. His memories roll back to the Winter of 1975 just before the fall of Saigon.

 “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.” 

The protagonist is a North Vietnamese mole implanted in the South Vietnamese Army. As an ‘aide-de-camp’ of a South Vietnamese General, he intrudes into the private spaces of the General and accomplishes espionage. The narrator reports to his superior Man who monitors the activities of Viet Cong spy-agents in the South. The novel deviates from a conventional spy-thriller and dives deep into the narrator's psychology as a double agent. 

“I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides” 

More than a talent, it is a curse that he can see both sides of any issue because his duplicity from the beginning divides his allegiance among opposing camps. He sympathizes with the plight of the South Vietnamese dying at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army, at the same time he is happy to see the Northern Front of the South Vietnamese Army collapsing in the battle between North and South Vietnam. 

 The narrator is in good faith with a South Vietnamese General, his wife Madame and their daughter Lana. When the Fall of Saigon is imminent, the narrator’s assignment is to bribe the immigration officers to ensure a safe passage for the General and his family out of Saigon. The General uses his influence with a reputed CIA officer, Claude who is the General’s friend and the narrator’s mentor. Claude first met the narrator in 1954 in a barge. The narrator was a refugee trying to escape from the North to South Vietnam. Claude helped the narrator to settle in the South and became his mentor in understanding the American ways of thought and counterintelligence. 

 Despite the best of their efforts, Claude can only manage a C-130 carrier plane for the General’s exile which could accommodate 92 paratroopers with their gear. That was too inadequate a flight to save the General’s extended family of 58 members. The general entrusts the narrator to make a final list of those who can escape with him on the flight. This is a dirty job because those who are left behind would meet their fate in the hands of the Viet Cong. As a double agent, he has to put up the show to be in the General’s good books. 

 The narrator influences the General to ensure three seats on the flight for his friends—Bon, Linh and their son Duc. Man, Bon and the narrator are blood-brothers and they have sworn to protect each other to the end. However, Bon is ignorant about the true identities of Man and the narrator. Bon is an anti-communist whose sentiments run deep against the Viet Cong for murdering his father. 

 On the fated day, the General’s men in exile set out for a journey of their life leaving behind everything precious except their memories. On the tarmac, they are attacked either by the Viet Cong or the angry South Vietnamese soldiers in disarray. Multiple explosions happen and the aircraft is on fire. By a stroke of misfortune, Linh and Duc are killed in the attack. 

 The General and his men finally fly out of Saigon to the safety of the Asan refugee camp in Guam. Men who were pampered in the relative comforts of life are now exposed to the harsh realities of stateless refugees. At the funeral of Lanh and Duc, Bon is catatonic (motionless) and the narrator helps him slowly to come back to life. From Guam, the US military takes the refugees to Camp Pendelton in San Diego. There the narrator writes his first letter to his Parisian aunt about their whereabouts. This is an undercover activity meant to report to Man, the narrator’s handler in Vietnam. Much against the narrator’s wish, Man assigns him to accompany the General to spy on the counter-revolutionary activities against the Viet Cong regime. 

 Refugees need sponsors to escape camp life. The narrator uses his old acquaintance with Professor Avery Wright Hammer of Occidental College for the purpose. The narrator was a former student of Occident College. He studied English Literature and mastered American ways of life and thinking. He was a spy- in training. The professor not only helps him to find a job in the Department of Oriental Studies of Occidental College but also campaigns a fund-raising program for the narrator’s relocation. A write-up about this only Asian student of the Occidental College and a former Vietnamese army captain turned refugee makes him famous at the Occidental College. The narrator gains first-hand knowledge about racism and the fetishization of Asians in the US. The narrator meets Ms. Sofia Mori, the secretary of the Department Chair in the college. The narrator is a clerk in the same office. He falls for her, but she cautions the narrator that their relationship would be nothing more than casual. She espouses free love. She is a critique of the narrator about his attitude and manners of pleasing the white men. She hates the Department Chair for his fetish attitude towards Asians. The Department Chair discusses the history, politics and literature of the Orient with the narrator. He assigns him to present his ideas about the differences between the Oriental and the Occidental traits in him as it would be helpful for the students of Asian origin in his department. 

 The General and his wife live in a bungalow in a slightly tony part of Los Angeles. The major opens a liquor shop for a living and Madame starts a restaurant. The novel shows the situation of the Vietnamese War Veterans who were once men of rank and file now doing menial jobs for a living. But they are soldiers with revolutionary fervour in their hearts. The General starts counter-revolutionary activities to enter Vietnam and topple the Viet Cong regime. He doubts the presence of a spy among them leaking their undercover activities to the Viet Cong. The narrator used to chauffeur around the General in his car. In a private talk, General shares his doubts with the narrator. His throat dries up, but the tactful double agent mentions the name of the Crapulent Major as the mole. Though the General didn’t believe him at first, there are multiple reasons to doubt the major. The narrator, who was a captain in the Secret Police in South Vietnam, is given the task of the Major’s assassination. He discusses the matter with Bon. He didn’t see any purpose in his life after the death of his beloved wife and son. Now he has a purpose to live- to avenge the death of his father on a Viet Cong sympathizer. The narrator meticulously plans the execution of the Major. One night as the major was returning from his work in the gas station, Bon shot him from behind. 

 Soon after the assassination of the innocent major, the narrator leaves for the Philippines to work as a script consultant for the film The Hamlet- based on the Vietnam War. The Auteur, the director of the film is an acquaintance of the Congressman, a Republican representative of Orange County in the U.S. The Congressman suggests the name of the narrator to The Auteur to assist him with the cast of Vietnamese in the film. The narrator understands the American version of the Vietnam War in Hollywood films is only a glorification of the Americans saving the yellow-skinned people from the atrocities of their people. Hollywood caters to the tastes of the American audience where the voices of the Vietnamese people are ignored or misrepresented. The narrator has a narrow escape from an accidental explosion in the set and is hospitalized. The film company offers him 10,000 dollars as compensation. The narrator comes back to the U.S., and he gives half the money to the widow of the Crapulent Major to atone for his guilty action. 

 While he was in the Philippines Ms Sofia Morie became very close to Sonny, a reporter with a strong leftist outlook who has published articles of anti-revolutionary flavour. The General asks the narrator to murder, Sonny if he wants to join the revolutionary guerrillas secretly going to Thailand. The narrator murders Sonny in cold blood. The General and the madame take the narrator to task for seducing their daughter Lana whose American ways of life estranged them from their daughter. 

 The narrator enters the last leg of his journey in the novel as he undertakes the tour to Thailand and from there to Laos. Somewhere on the border of Vietnam the narrator along with Bon is captured and imprisoned. The Commandant initiates a reeducation program to make him understand what is more important than freedom and independence. After undergoing rigorous torture, the realization dawns on the narrator. That “Nothing exists” is the answer to the question. When the novel ends, we find the narrator ferried across the Mekong River in an over-crowded fishing trawler where his fate is uncertain.

 My Thoughts 

The use of dark comedy may violate the sense of morality in some readers. It is brutally honest in discussing the struggles of the Vietnamese diaspora in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon. They are displaced Asians whose voices are hushed up in Hollywood films and the war literature of academia. The central themes of war, politics, violence and sex are satirized using black comedy. 

 “Americans had fled for their lives and left the residents to turn on one another. But despite this precedent, the atmosphere was strangely quiet in Saigon, most of the Saigonese citizenry behaving like people in a scuppered marriage, willing to cling gamely to each other and drown so long as nobody declared the adulterous truth.” 

The introduction of the protagonist as a spy whose allegiances are divided and with no one entirely is quaint and complex, but achieves the purpose of analyzing events from both sides. 

 The conflicts going on within the characters and the turn of events, as a result, make the reader glued to the plotline. The narrator’s biracial ethnicity of half-French and half-Vietnamese born of an illicit relationship is at the root of all his psychological problems. The introduction of such a character is not accidental. It gives the author the liberty to present historical facts of American intervention in Vietnam from the Vietnamese perspective.

 The Vietnam War gave birth to thousands of fatherless babies. Their ethnicity was always in question. The novel raises the ethical question of the role of women and children being victimized in a battle fought between men. 

 “She was a poor person, I was her poor child, and no one asked these poor people if they wanted to die of thirst and exposure on the coastal sea, or if they wanted to be robbed and raped by their soldiers. If those thousands still lived, they would not have believed how they had died, just as we could not believe that the Americans- our friends, our benefactors, our protectors spurned our request to send more money.” 

The very nature of all bloody revolutions is busted in the novel. 

 “I understood, at last, how our revolution had gone from being the vanguard of political change to the rearguard hoarding power. In this transformation, we were not unusual. Hadn’t the French and the Americans done exactly the same? Once revolutionaries themselves, they had become imperialists, colonizing and occupying our defiant little land, taking away our freedom in the name of saving us. Our revolution took considerably longer than theirs and was considerably bloodier, but we made up for lost time. When it came to learning the worst habits of our French masters and their American replacements, we quickly proved ourselves the best. We, too, could abuse grand ideals!” 

 This novel would ask questions about all forms of loyalties that we adhere to. It shows us the corrosive nature of war in dividing people based on ideologies, race, ethnicity, faith, language and colour. All in all, it is a fantastic read that would haunt us for a long time after we had turned the last pages of the novel.