Discuss the Divided loyalties of Fowler and Explore how Graham Greene’s own problems of moral and religious loyalty are portrayed through his novel and to what extent Fowler could be seen as a self-representation of Greene.
...nam in the form of his new found love, Pwong. However Fowler is still married to his wife who still resides in London. She in turn cannot give Fowler the divorce he requires due to loyalty to her religion which states that the marital sacrament cannot be broken. However Fowler does not reveal the truth about his marital status and he deceives Pwong by telling her that his wife had agreed on a divorce. Fowler’s new attachments lead him to deceive the British office in order to stay in Vietnam with Pwong. His stories show themselves to not be of high enough quality or topical value and, as a result, he receives a letter from Britain requesting his return home. In response to this Fowler says he is in fact close to attaining a huge story for the office, and in response to this is given a further 3 months leave. Maybe, in Fowler’s eyes, this is long enough for him to finally convince Pwong to return to London with him. Love, along with the horrors and injustice that Fowler has experienced in Vietnam, has clouded his mind and has made him forget his duty and the true purpose of his placement in Vietnam. I feel it when Fowler views the results of the massacre that his intentions become subjective and emotionally charged. It has also made it impossible for Fowler to remain detached and impartial to the events of the war, and as Hinh says “Sooner or later, Mr. Fowler, one has to take sides, if one is to remain human.” Now he may well do anything to stay in Vietnam with Pwong and to break his ties with Britain. It would seem that Fowler has a lot of pain in the West and many reminders of things dear to him that he has lost. Although his loyalties in Britain may have been broken, they have not been forgotten, and however much Fowler would wish this not to be so, he has unavoidable duties to his home country. Fowler rarely speaks of the love in his past life. It would seem the events surrounding his relationships have hurt him greatly and he says that a part of him died in the West, “It was a kind of death. Then I came East” However whatever ties Fowler does still have with Britain, through his revelation “If I lost her, for me, it would be the beginning of death,” we can see his adoration and love of Pwong as sincere, but also that it may be the comfort and security of his relationship with Pwong, and the simplicity of the Eastern ways that he craves. His journey east can be seen as an escape from the bindings of his home and a quest for a new life and a new beginning. However at the time if his journey he may not have realized this to be so and it may have been an unconscious urge to get away from the reminders of his pain and suffering. Indeed many travelers seek revelation and a new beginning in the East through alternative ideas and religion. Indeed it could be seen that Fowler has left his home in order to escape the bindings of Christianity. The explicit tone of religion and religious loyalty is not as apparent in The Quiet American as it is in many of Greene's novels such as “The end of the affair”. However it still contains the moral religious aspects and dilemma's that "Greene's previous works have tortured over". The end of the novel provides us with an aspect of religion, and the presence of a higher being, through the final words when Fowl...