Fowler's Reflections on the Caodaists

"Caodaism was always the favourite chapter of my briefing to visitors. Caodaism, the invention of a Cochin civil servant, was a synthesis of three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A Pope and female cardinals. Prophecy by planchette. Saint Victor Hugo. Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in technicolour. Newcomers were always delighted with the description. How could one explain the dreariness of the whole business: the private army of twenty-five thousand men, armed with mortars made out of the exhaust-pipes of old cars, allies of the French who turned neutral at the moment of danger?"

(Greene 83)

This segment gives some interesting insight into Fowler as a character and as a narrator. The language in the first half displays Fowler's exasperation with not only the caodaist faith, but with his work in Vietnam as a whole. He immediately separates himself from the group that would be "delighted" by the Caodaists, stating that it is a favorite of "visitors". This implies that Fowler has started to see himself as a resident of Vietnam and feels he is qualified to represent and explain it to outsiders. Of course, its quite likely that these visitors wouldn't want to speak to anyone who wasn't european, but the fact remains that he mediates Vietnamese culture through his descriptions. His explanation of Caodaism does little to actually explain the religion, as he only conveys it in relation to western concepts and imagery. His statements are brief fragments, displaying disinterest but also unreliability in respect to word choice. For example, he refers to the Great Divine Temple of Caodaism as a "Cathedral". When it comes to Vietnamese culture, Fowler only bothers to explore a topic so far as to have the most rudimentary understanding of it, an understanding anchored in western thinking. Seeing Christ depicted by the Caodaist's, he immediately defines the remaining elements of the scene in Catholic terms.

The description of the temple as a "Walt Disney fantasia" creates the sense that this entire religion is something of a tourist attraction. The problem of militourism arises several times throughout The Quiet American, as many of the characters who Fowler interacts with are military agents. Fowler's disdain for this is evident in his distancing of himself from these tourist, as well as his description of the Caodaists in the last sentence. He refers to their private army as a "drear[y]...business". The word choice here suggests that what Fowler thinks of as objective reporting is perhaps more rightly described as disinterested reporting.

It is also interesting to consider that Caodaisim's teaching center on love, and how Fowler's distaste for their religion relates to his feelings toward the concept of love. This is something that the novel explores in the love triangle between him, Pyle, and Phuong. As we discussed in lecture, Fowler and Pyle can been seen as representations of European and U.S. interests in Indochina. But is there a similarity between Fowler's view of the Caodaists and his view of Pyle? Can they be read as foils for one another? Pyle is a man obsessed with the idea of love, a defender of a very specific view of it, but also a perpetrator of war crimes. When relating this to the Caodaists, perhaps it hints at some larger significance to the concept of love in the novel.

-Thomas Damgaard