Rac(e)ing Questions III

16      In fact, the scene where Pyle saves Fowler's life brings this struggle to the very surface of the text. "Who the hell asked you to save my life," screams the journalist to the young man trying to help him, displaying how he prefers death to a life that he will always owe to the stronger man (111). The feelings of Fowler's inadequacy builds after this encounter; when Phuong asks him why he will not open the letter from his wife he replies: "I'm afraid of the loneliness, of the Press club and the bed sitting room, I'm afraid of Pyle." (117). Therefore, when Pyle convinces Phuong to leave the journalist, Fowler projects himself as more and more impotent to the reader. He narrates his unsuccessful attempt at violence towards Pyle at the office where he winds up weeping in the bathroom; he also describes how he cannot perform sexually with the prostitute as he becomes "frozen" with memory (147, 153). By looking past his front of being the "ethical journalist," even Fowler's rage at Pyle's political involvement with the bombings can be read as part of his overall competitive rage over Phuong (Gorra 143). The Quiet American presents the narrative of a man whose sense of rivalry over the female object is inseparable from his obsession with his own masculine power image.

17      In addition, Fowler's narration captures Pyle's struggle with masculinity. The reader views Pyle as a man desperate to preserve a noble, aboveboard image of gentlemanly conduct. For instance, Pyle tells Fowler that he will not marry Phuong until he brings her home to meet his mother and gives her a "proper" ceremony (155). Pyle's constant attention to formality and to the process of "saving" the needy woman implies a desire to bolster his own male image in the world. "You have such an awful lot of experience, Thomas," claims Pyle, "I've never had a girl. Not properly. Not what you'd call a real experience" (102). While this statement does grant Fowler some of the masculine respect he desires, it also implies that Pyle's quest for Phuong is an attempt to make up for masculine lack of experience. Pyle also reveals his own masculine motivation when he explains his reasons for saving Fowler's life to the old man; he tells his friend that he saved him because if he left him to die, "[he] couldn't have faced Phuong…when you are in love you want to play the game" (112). Pyle directly admits that his desire for the female object revolves around his need to "play" the male part against Fowler. The homosocial bonds between men reflect a battle to own a masculine image.

18      In A Man of the People, Achebe similarly characterizes the competition between Odili and Nanga as a struggle for masculinity and power. The desire of the two rivals to prove their masculinity to each other is evident even before Elsie enters the picture; Odili tells the reader "Chief Nanga and I [had] already swopped many tales of conquest and I felt somehow compelled to speak in derogatory terms about women in general" (60). The men of Achebe's novel convey to the reader that earning male respect involves the ability to conquer the female. After the episode with Nanga and Elsie, Odili actually becomes obsessed with his threatened masculinity. The ability of Nanga to make him feel like an emasculated, colonized object is evident as Odili claims:

A man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another & not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood required that I make him pay for his insult in full measure. In flesh and blood terms I realized that I must go back, seek out Nanga's intended parlour wife and give her the works, good and proper. (77)

Odili's reaction to betrayal is to reverse his emasculation by claiming his rival's political position and his woman. Yet, the reader comes to see that Odili's struggle for masculinity is not one sided, and Nanga is just as insecure. For instance, in the scene where Nanga tries to convince Odili to drop out of the race, he enters sarcastically calling "Odili, my great enemy" (116). Nanga tries to emasculate Odili by stressing his "youth" and claims "I [Nanga] am not afraid of you…Every goat and every fowl in this country knows that you will fail woefully" (116, 119). Yet, Nanga's desire to pay Odili for dropping out as a political competitor shows that Nanga is in fact threatened by the young man. In tandem with this, the violence that erupts between the two men in the scene of the political rally speaks to the violence which becomes a mask for feelings of inadequacy. During this scene of physical struggle, Odili describes how "Edna rushed forward crying and tried to get between us but he pushed her aside so violently that she landed on her buttocks on the wooden platform" (141). Edna serves as the reflector of male brutality; this scene reinforces Sedgwick's construction of triangulated desire in which the female presence heightens the emasculating effects of male violence. A Man of the People shows male characters using a female body to test the boundaries of their masculine strength.

19      The masculine struggles depicted by Greene and Achebe also relate to their overall messages on imperialism and patriarchy in the new world order. Greene uses triangulated desire in his novel to highlight the historical and theoretical connection between fading masculinity, power and neo-imperialism. He deliberately makes one of his rivals British and one of his rivals American, so that their battle over the native woman would recall the structure of triangular trade superimposed on Sedgwick's asymmetrical love triangle. In this sense, the love triangle can be read in allegorical terms in which Fowler represents fading masculinity and a fading British Empire; Pyle stands for an emerging American Empire equally fighting for the masculine image; finally, Phuong symbolizes the native state and the feminized, oppressed body (Miller 109).[3]Miller supports this argument by explaining that the struggle for control over Phuong can function as a representation for a larger struggle: "Phuong is the East, the third world; Fowler the old, and Pyle the new." The ensuing triangulated battle which emerges in the novel symbolizes world powers struggling for a masculine right to control decolonized lands. Greene plots desire in this fashion to portray the way that gender roles have been and remain bound in political and international power struggles. Phuong, as a woman and a former colonized individual, is the perfect body from which Greene can reveal the place of the feminine, colonized body in the new world order.

20      In Greene's novel, Phuong is often associated with a native land that lacks action, power and intelligence. Fowler constantly speaks of his mistress as an empty and passive object and he looks to her body rather than to her mind to satisfy his desires. Fowler's simultaneous presentation of Phuong as a weak female and a passive colonized body is evident in the following passage:

It isn't in their nature [to love] [...]. It's a cliché to call them children & but there's one thing which is childish. They love you in return for kindness, security, the presents you give them & they hate you for a blow or an injustice. (104)

By using the general terms "they" and "them" when referring to Phuong in this passage, Fowler tries to promote a strong, British image in comparison to a collectively weak, native population. Greene presents Fowler as the hopeful imperialist "protector" of the "childish" native woman and lends a paternalism to his treatment of his mistress (Couto 169). And although Pyle represents the emerging power in this novel, Fowler implies that his rival's treatment of the feminine object is really no better. Without even being able to communicate with the woman, Pyle hopes to come in and "rescue" Phuong from her chaotic native land. "I want to give her a decent life & this place smells," suggests Pyle (133). Fowler reinforces the "colonial" nature of his rival's comment with his sarcastic retort, "I suppose you'll offer her a deep freeze and a car for herself and the newest television set" (133). Yet, while Fowler tries to reveal Pyle's misplaced motives, the reader sees that Fowler desires the same exact thing. Both men compete in a gendered rivalry over a female object in a way that mirrors a global power struggle over third world lands.