The End of American Innocence Revisited

## A Prophecy of Innocence Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American', published in the United States in 1956, is a novel that predicted the future by describing the present. Set in 1950s Vietnam, where Ho Chi Minh's forces were fighting French colonial powers for independence, the story revolves around Thomas Fowler, a jaded middle-aged British correspondent, and Alden Pyle, an idealistic young CIA operative. Pyle's arrival in Saigon marks the inciting incident, as he attempts to cultivate a U.S.-backed "third force" in Indochina. ## The Anticipation of Horror The novel anticipated the horror of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam with eerie precision. Pyle's cultivation of a third force, the dangers of U.S. humanitarian intervention, and the catastrophic belief that Vietnam cannot "go" lest all of Asia fall to communism, all eerily foreshadow the events that would unfold. One of the most chilling scenes occurs when a French pilot describes to Fowler a relatively new weapon that Americans would become very familiar with over the coming years - napalm bombing. ## The Danger of Dogmatic Faith The novel also shows the danger of dogmatic faith in American exceptionalism. Pyle sincerely believes in the cultivation of a third force not because it's good for the United States but because being more like the United States will be good for the Vietnamese. However, before arriving, he had never been to the country and is basing his entire ideology on the writing of a U.S. political scientist. The climax of the novel comes when the third force that Pyle has financed on behalf of the CIA sets off a bomb in a crowded Saigon market, killing and wounding civilians. Fowler, after watching a mother cover the body of her dead infant with her hat, is shaking with fury when he finds Pyle, who, never having seen death before, is in a state of shock at the sight of blood on his shoe. ## A Question of Innocence Seventy years after the publication of 'The Quiet American', we are left to wonder whether the country has outlived Greene's prophecy about the dangers of American innocence and exceptionalism. The novel's portrayal of Pyle, a character based on the Americans that Greene met during his travels, is an accurate representation of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Despite its initial reception, the novel grew in popularity in the United States during the Vietnam War, and its themes of the dangers of American innocence and exceptionalism remain relevant today. In the years following the novel's publication, Greene's portrait of a man determined "to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, the world" has been used to explain the attitude behind not only the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, but countless foreign interventions, including the so-called forever wars of the 2000s. However, on the 70th anniversary of the book's stateside publication, we are left to question whether the country has outlived Greene's prophecy. Has the United States moved beyond the dangers of American innocence and exceptionalism, or are we still trapped in a cycle of self-righteousness and interventionism? The answer, much like the novel itself, remains a subject of debate and discussion.