Summary and Analysis of The Sympathizer: Based on the Book by Viet Thanh Nguyen
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Summary and Analysis of The Sympathizer: Based on the Book by Viet Thanh Nguyen
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Overview
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This short summary and analysis of The Sympathizer includes:
- Historical context
- Chapter-by-chapter overviews
- Profiles of the main characters
- Themes and symbols
- Important quotes
- Fascinating trivia
- Glossary of terms
- Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book depicts the secret life of an unnamed Vietnamese man, grappling with various identities, whose story begins with the evacuation of Saigon, continues with his life living in America after the war, and ends with a shocking twist. Written in the form of a confession, this darkly humorous tale is a brilliant, long-overdue addition to the canon of immigrant literature.
Part spy novel, part political thriller, and part satire, The Sympathizer offers smart, scathing, and timely commentary on the state of race, class, war, politics, and the media.
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504044806 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Worth Books |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Series: | Smart Summaries |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 30 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Summary and Analysis of The Sympathizer
Based on the Book by Viet Thanh Nguyen
By Worth Books
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4480-6
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Chapter 1
An unnamed narrator begins his confession to a mysterious figure he calls "the Commandant." The narrator, we surmise, writes from a prison cell. His story begins in Vietnam, at the end of the Vietnam War: The narrator works as a communist spy. He infiltrated the inner circle of the General, an American sympathizer and head of the South Vietnamese secret police. As a spy, he is forced to persecute communists — he is haunted by a female agent whom he arrested as she was trying to swallow a list of members of the secret police.
With Saigon on the verge of falling and the Americans pulling out, the General must evacuate or face death. Claude, his friend in the CIA, arranges a flight to Guam with seats for only some of the General's staff and family. The narrator compiles a list of people who will make the flight; he knows that those left off the list will likely die.
The narrator meets up for a good-bye drink with his two best friends, Bon and Man. The three men are blood brothers — each bears the scar of their three-way blood oath on his palm. Man is a communist (and the narrator's spy handler), but Bon fought for South Vietnam. Bon will flee with the narrator; Man will stay behind. The three friends nearly get into an altercation with three South Vietnamese soldiers — one of the soldiers calls the narrator, who is half-French, a "bastard" — but explosions elsewhere in Saigon distract them.
Need to Know: The narrator frames the novel as a confession written from prison, but the circumstances of his imprisonment remain a mystery. The narrator describes himself as a man capable of viewing any issue from two sides — and this description is borne out in his role as a communist spy infiltrating the anticommunist forces, in his mixed-race heritage, and in his moral ambivalence.
Chapter 2
According to the General's instructions, the narrator has made arrangements for a select group of the General's family and staff to leave Vietnam. He obtained visas and transportation to the airport for the group of evacuees, including Bon and his wife, Linh, and their infant son, Duc — by bribing and threatening various officials.
On the morning of their flight, the evacuees ride in a convoy from the General's villa to the airport. They drive by Saigon's Lam Son Square, where the National Assembly of the Republic of Vietnam was based, and they pass the basilica where the narrator covertly met with Man, his communist handler and close friend. The last time they met there, Man instructed him to go to America and continue spying on the General. He playfully teases the narrator into admitting that he actually wants to go to the United States, to which the narrator considers its superficial qualities, and the fact that he is not at home anywhere in the world.
The airport is part military base, part evacuation zone. After fighting their way through the chaotic group of refugees and soldiers awaiting escape, the General's evacuee group settles in to wait for their flight number to be called.
Need to Know: On his last ride through Saigon, the narrator remembers his country's absurd political history — abused first by the French, then by the Americans, and he contemplated the blood oath made between him, Bon, and Man, binding each to the others, and to their own principles.
Chapter 3
The narrator begins this section by thanking the Commandant for his "notes" on the confession. He states that as a spy he did feel sympathy for the group he infiltrated.
At the airport, the narrator sits on a tennis court filled with refugees. He is wedged between Bon, Linh, and Duc on one side and three Vietnamese prostitutes on the other. The narrator flirts with the young ladies until, after hours of waiting, his flight number is called. The anxious refugees cram into a C-130 cargo plane, but just as it starts moving, a missile strikes — the airport is under siege, though it's impossible to tell whether the Viet Cong are attacking or whether the South Vietnamese, frustrated with the Americans, have decided to fire on the departing aircraft.
Another C-130 miraculously lands on the runway. It's the refugees' last chance to escape, and they run to it. The narrator and Bon make it aboard the departing plane, but Linh and Duc are hit and killed in the fray.
Need to Know: When Saigon falls, the South Vietnamese will likely be killed or imprisoned; the Americans have set up their own economy of goods and prostitution, and the Vietnamese who depended on them are left to struggle. In fleeing Saigon, the Americans betray their South Vietnamese allies and the narrator, who, despite his stated communist loyalties, cannot help but sympathize with them.
Chapter 4
The plane lands and the General's group is taken first to Camp Asan in Guam, then to Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. The National Liberation Front has taken Saigon. When the General tries to raise morale at the camp, the refugees greet him with anger and contempt — he fled to safety while their friends and family stayed and fought. The General tells the narrator that he thinks there's an informant among his staff. The narrator, panicking, names an innocent man who he refers to only as "the crapulent major."
In the year after the war, the Vietnamese refugees scatter across the country. The narrator lives with Bon in Los Angeles and works at Occidental College, his alma mater, as an administrator in the Oriental Studies department. His boss, a white man, gives the narrator patronizing, tone-deaf advice on how to balance his dual Oriental and Occidental heritage.
Over the course of his first year in America, the narrator continues reporting to Man via letters written in invisible ink and sent through an intermediary in Paris. He recounts the Vietnamese refugees' struggles in America. Man sends the narrator coded replies in the mail, which the narrator deciphers using a book called Asian Communism and the Oriental Mode of Destruction: On Understanding and Defeating the Marxist Threat to Asia by Richard Hedd.
Need to Know: The narrator's new life in America is rich with irony and dualities. He is a man of Asian (Oriental) heritage who works at Occidental College; he uses an anticommunist book to decode communist missives; the General trusts him — the communist spy — to name the communist spy in their midst. The South Vietnamese must endure the irony: as Vietnamese, they cannot fully assimilate; but as Americans, they cannot stay fully Vietnamese.
Chapter 5
The General plans a celebration for the grand opening of his liquor store on the one-year anniversary of Saigon's fall. The narrator receives permission to leave work early for the party from his immediate superior, a Japanese American woman named Ms. Mori with whom he has a sexual — but not romantic or committed — relationship. He remembers his first sexual experience: As a child, he once used a raw squid to masturbate. (Afterward, he was sure to take that particular squid for himself when his mother served it for dinner.) He doesn't find masturbation or sex obscene — he believes violence and war are far more depraved than sexual liberation.
Before the party, the narrator meets with the General and Claude, their friend in the CIA. Claude laments the bad decisions on America's part that led to Saigon's fall. The General tells Claude he suspects a communist informant, and names the crapulent major. He orders the narrator to plan the crapulent major's assassination; he and Bon will carry the murder out. Though the narrator is reluctant to comply, he notes that Bon seems happy for the first time since the death of his wife and child.
Need to Know: The General still believes that he can take back South Vietnam. He orders the narrator to murder an innocent man; he will do it because he values his life and his position as a communist spy.
Chapter 6
The liquor store's opening celebration begins. The narrator greets the men he knew from Vietnam; many of them, once high-ranking officials, are working minimum-wage jobs and collecting welfare, struggling to make their way in America. The narrator also runs into Sonny, a college friend and fellow Vietnamese scholarship student who is now an editor at a Vietnamese newspaper for the refugee committee in California.
While planning the crapulent major's assassination, the narrator dines with him and watches him, learning about his habits and his family. The narrator feels uneasy and guilty — the major is innocent, and he is married with newborn twins. To ease his conscience, the narrator seeks moral justification in a dinner party conversation with an old college professor and Claude, who assuage his guilt by helping him recall the major's corrupt behavior during the war.
After weeks of planning, the narrator and Bon ambush the major outside his apartment complex. Bon shoots him in the head.
Need to Know: Faced with assassinating the major — who is innocent of being a spy, but who committed other crimes during the war — the narrator grapples with his conflicted sense of guilt and duty; his situation demands that he comply, but he wonders if this murder will serve the common good.
Chapter 7
The narrator takes Ms. Mori to a Vietnamese wedding as his guest. The bride is the daughter of a Vietnamese refugee, and most of the guests are refugees, too. A right-wing politician called the Congressman gives a rousing speech in support of the South Vietnamese cause and against communism. Also in attendance are Sonny and Lana, the General's wayward oldest daughter — educated in the United States, she dresses and acts like an American. She sings provocatively at the wedding; the narrator watches, lusting after her.
A week after the wedding, the narrator drives the General and Madame to the Congressman's house, where they discuss their shared hatred of communism. The Congressman tells them that, as a side job, he consults with Hollywood directors on their scripts, advising them on how best to preserve American values in their movies. He invites the narrator to look over the script of an upcoming film about the Vietnam War: The Hamlet.
Need to Know: The Congressman's support of the Vietnamese is motivated mostly by his political agenda rather than by true sympathy for them. The Congressman is a potential source of support for the General's counterrevolutionary cause, while Lana represents a possible — and forbidden — love interest for the narrator.
Chapter 8
After reading over The Hamlet and making notes on the script, the narrator drives to Hollywood for a meeting with the Auteur, a famous writer and director. The Hamlet is the story of courageous American Green Berets defending a small hamlet from an evil squad of Viet Cong, led by a villainous communist called King Cong. The narrator finds the script infuriating: in it, the Vietnamese are portrayed as evil, pathetic, or stupid. Most of them are slaughtered, and not one has a speaking part.
At the meeting, the Auteur and his assistant, Violet, treat the narrator with derision and disrespect. The narrator makes several suggestions — add Vietnamese and female characters with speaking parts, for example — but the Auteur rudely rejects them.
Dispirited, the narrator returns to the General and Madame's house. Over a bowl of her excellent pho, the men discuss the General's plan to mobilize the refugees into a force that will, eventually, go to Vietnam to fight the war against the communists anew.
Need to Know: The infuriating meeting with the Auteur highlights the lack of accurate representation of Vietnamese people in America, in media, and outside of Asia. The narrator realizes that the world will remember the war via its Hollywood film depiction, rather than by its actual history — even though the North Vietnamese beat the Americans, the Americans will take revenge by misrepresenting the Vietnamese in film.
Chapter 9
Much to the narrator's surprise, the Auteur and Violet invite him to join The Hamlet's production crew at the film set in the Philippines. The Auteur is using real Vietnamese refugees as extras, and he wants the narrator to work with them to translate and ensure authenticity.
The narrator helps the General set up a front organization, the Benevolent Fraternity of Former Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. The Fraternity will funnel the donations it receives into funding the General's counterrevolutionary Movement. Once the front is set up, the narrator leaves for the Philippines.
The narrator arrives with his rucksack at the film production site. There, he sympathizes with the refugees — they are outcasts, just as he once was. He recalls when, as a child, he was taunted and insulted for being half-French.
The Hamlet's film's set designer, Harry, has meticulously recreated an entire Vietnamese hamlet in the Philippine jungle. The narrator's favorite part of the set is the cemetery. He pastes his mother's picture onto one of the gravestones and paints her name on it in red; he was devoted to his mother, who died during his sophomore year of college, and he mourns her death at his makeshift tombstone.
Need to Know: The narrator sees his job with The Hamlet as an opportunity to secure better representation of Vietnamese people in American cinema; once he is on the set, he reconnects with his past and his lost country. Meanwhile the General's Movement is rife with dramatic irony: we know that the South Vietnamese will never take back Vietnam from the communists.
Chapter 10
The Auteur and the actors arrive on set. Two Americans, the Thespian and the Idol, will play the lead roles of Captain Will Shamus and Sergeant Jay Bellamy. The Auteur has added three Vietnamese siblings — Binh, an American-sympathizing older brother who gets brutally killed by King Cong; Mai, a younger sister who gets brutally raped by King Cong; and Danny Boy, a younger brother who would be brought back to the states and adopted by Bellamy's family. These three characters are not portrayed by Vietnamese actors, but by a Korean American character actor, a Chinese English actress, and a Filipino child actor.
Filming begins. The narrator acts as a translator and advocate for the Vietnamese refugees; they are the film's extras and only actors of Vietnamese heritage. He clashes with the Auteur when he criticizes Mai's rape scene — it's heavy-handed and unnecessary. The Auteur dismisses and insults him.
The narrator helps with Binh's violent interrogation scene, directing the Vietnamese refugees to, as the Auteur says, "act natural," meaning, act like the Viet Cong. The refugees are confused — they fought against the Viet Cong in the war; if they act natural, they wouldn't be acting like Viet Cong. Still, they shrug off their confusion and pretend to beat Binh. The scene reminds the narrator of his experiences with actual interrogations: during the war, he was a student in an interrogation course taught by Claude.
Need to Know:The Hamlet provides a satirical commentary of real-life Vietnam War films in which the Vietnamese are stereotyped as stupid, brutal, savage, or sexualized and act only as foils to American heroism. Though the Auteur seemed to want authenticity in his movie, it was filmed in the Philippines (not Vietnam), the only Asian actors with speaking roles are played by non-Vietnamese, and the only genuine Vietnamese onscreen are from the south of the country, paid to portray Viet Cong from the north.
Chapter 11
As the filming of The Hamlet progresses, the narrator begins to feel that he has infiltrated a piece of propaganda; he reflects that he may have been deluded in thinking he could change the way Vietnamese are portrayed in films. Instead, he may have done more damage: as a real Vietnamese consultant, he lends the appearance of authenticity to the film's representation of Vietnamese. He realizes that the movie will take the place of actual history: Americans will remember the war as it appeared in the movies, not as it really was.
The narrator learns that the cemetery will be destroyed in the filming of the final battle scene, so he goes to say good-bye to the memorial he made for his mother. The cemetery is rigged to blow up during filming, but somehow the explosion is triggered early, and the narrator wakes up in a hospital with bad burns. The hospital's all-white atmosphere reminds him of the room in which he interrogated communist agents under Claude's tutelage. He recalls, with regret, how he tortured a Viet Cong soldier known as the Watchman, who later committed suicide.
Need to Know:The Hamlet is as much propaganda as it is art; it justifies and perpetuates American attitudes toward the Vietnamese by portraying them as evil or helpless. As the narrator recalls from a speech by Chairman Mao, art and politics are inseparable.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of The Sympathizer by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Context,Overview,
Cast of Characters,
Summary,
Character Analysis,
Themes and Symbols,
Author's Style,
Direct Quotes and Analysis,
Trivia,
What's That Word?,
Critical Response,
About Viet Thanh Nguyen,
For Your Information,
Bibliography,
Copyright,
