I don't want to belabor the general outline of the story too much, considering I reviewed the first film version last week. You've still got Fowler, the older British journalist on assignment in Vietnam (French Indo-China.) You've got Phuong, the young woman living with him. You've got Pyle, the young American here to create a "Third Force" (always capitalized) to bring about "natural democracy", who falls in love with Phuong, but wants to be an upright guy about it with Fowler, and ends up dead.
Is he dead because of love or politics? In the Audie Murphy movie, it seems pretty clearly tilted so that, if the ones who actually kill Pyle are motivated by his political actions, it's Fowler's desperation at losing Phuong (due in no small part to his lying to her) that motivates him to set Pyle up for ambush.
I wouldn't say that has nothing to do with how things end up, but it's written such that it's the terrorist attack in the city, arranged by Pyle's imagined "Third Force" leader, that finally spurs Fowler to act. Because Pyle warned Phuong not to go to her usual place for her mid-day milkshake, but extended no concern to all the other people on the streets. Because there was supposed to be a military parade, and only officers were supposed to get hurt, you see. Pyle could never imagine the general would proceed with the bombing even with the parade canceled. That the general might see dead civilians as a more effective message than dead soldiers.
And Pyle (as the proxy for the U.S. government) won't wash his hands of the general, confident the general understands what they do and do not find acceptable, and that he won't buck them again. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Pyle's superiors were telling the general something very different from Pyle, assuming we take Pyle's statements at face value, and I think we do. For as little as Fowler likes Pyle, he doesn't accuse him of dishonesty. Probably because he thinks the American too dim for that. But at the end of the day, Pyle has already mentally moved on from the death and carnage the bombing caused, still focused on his grand notions of "natural democracy." He'll keep on this track, more will die, and so Fowler sends him to his doom.
The movies do a better job of creating a sense of the place where the story takes place - Greene's writing doesn't create much of a picture of Saigon or any of the places up-country Fowler journeys - but the book does take an expanded approach to some of the conversations between Fowler and Pyle that I appreciated. The night in the watchtower, they spend more time discussing their political views than we get in the movies, which tend to focus more on both of their interests in Phuong.
The political discussion does more to highlight their differences. Where Fowler, perhaps owing to his journalist training, tends to focus on the personal, rather than the national level of, as he puts it, 'isms and ocracies.' He's against the boss that beats his laborer, but not too concerned with the system that enables it. Or he doesn't think changing the system will resolve that particular issue. Pyle is, of course, operating on a belief in the healing power of large-scale changes to systems and governments, oblivious to what that means at the ground level beyond an amorphous, "it'll make things better!"
There's also a scene, after Fowler's lies have been discovered, where he chases the war to try and forget about Phuong, and ends up being snuck along on a close air support mission by a French officer. Which both offers a sense of the passage of time, that Fowler had long enough to go stir-crazy and feel compelled to get away for a while. It also lets Fowler experience some of what the war is actually like, what it does to human bodies and how casually it's done. That he can continue to claim he's not involved or engaged emotionally allows, in theory, for greater emotional heft when he does, finally, decide to get involved.
The scene also offers the perspective of a French officer on this war he's in, how futile he thinks it will turn out to be. Greene never much delves into the perspective of the Vietnamese on the whole thing, unless Phuong's indifference, or her sister taking a job Pyle arranges at the American Legation are meant to be the perspective. There's also Mr. Heng, who tips Fowler off about the diolactin and the bike pump mold, but he's kept so secretive, a tiny piece of something much bigger and unseen, it's hard to tell. Is he angry the Americans are involved, or that they're aiding a side different from his own, or something else entirely?
I don't care for the ending, where everything is, for now, comin' up Fowler. Pyle's dead, and if the French detective knows Fowler lied about Pyle visiting the evening of his death, it's not going to come to anything. Phuong has gone back to Fowler, his editor grants him at least another year overseas before coming back to London for the editor position. And his wife has decided to go ahead and move for a divorce.
Pyle being dead doesn't bother me. You treat other people like expendable pawns or abstract figures in your geopolitical games, they're likely to do the same. But this sense that, what, Fowler decided to get involved, one time, and the universe shines upon him?
I guess there's always hope guilt will push him deeper into opium addiction, Phuong's sister will find someone else to set her up with, and he staggers around until passing out facedown in the river and drowns. Make it the opposite side of the bank from where Pyle was drowned, if you want some symbolic irony.
'You don't know what I'm escaping from. It's not from the war. That's no concern of mine. I'm not involved.'
'You will all be. One day.'
'Not me.'
'You are still limping.'
'They had the right to shoot at me, but they weren't even doing that. They were knocking down a tower. One should always avoid demolition squads. Even in Piccadilly.'
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