The quiet america essay example

The novel quite America was written by Graham Greene. The objective of the novel was to show why wars are not good. Graham was motivated to write the book by an American aid worker. The aim of graham was to discourage wars that were present during the time. Graham used the novel to show how America was involved in wars and this made him to be closely investigated by America until his death. There are three main characters in the novel. Alden Pyle is one of the characters who is an American graduate who believe that communism and democracy should not be applied to solve the wars in places like Vietnam (Graham, 13). Thomas fowler is a journalist from Britain who was covering the war in Vietnam. Phuong on the other hand was a lady from Vietnam who loved fowler so as to get protection from him.
In the novel Pyle seemed to be against the war. However, other characters did not understand his motives. One of the motives of Pyle was to create a third force that would fight against the Vietnamese. According to him, communism or democracy would not work to a country like Vietnam. Therefore it can be seen that his motive was to support the French in the war. However, it was difficult to understand this since he was in the country pretending to be helping the people who were suffering from the war.
Pyle seems to have the motive of helping Phuong in the novel. However, it can be seen that he was in support of the French army who were against the Vietnamese. The fact that Phuong is a Vietnamese means that he was against her. Therefore his motive is to have her as his lover but not to save her from the French soldiers.
Pyle used various tools to form a third force. First, his intellectual knowledge was one of the tools. He strongly opposed communism and democracy and gave people reasons why the two would not work of Vietnam. This made people to see the importance of third forces.
Secondly, he was soft spoken hence would easily make people to believe in what he was saying. He appeared to be innocent but in the real sense, he was in support of the war. However, his innocent appearance made him to succeed in his mission of forming a third force.
Another tool that he used is the pretence that he was in the country to help those who were suffering in the war. This made people to believe that his plans were for good intentions. For example, his intention of saving Phuong seemed that he intended to help the Vietnamese who were suffering in the war.
An imperial age is a period whereby a country was able to form its empire, allied to other countries, trade with the allied countries and participate in wars with the support of the allied parties. In the imperialism, countries strived to ensure that they were superior to other countries. Imperial ages had many common characteristics with the cold war.
The main common characteristics of the imperialism and cold war period are that countries accumulated a lot of weapons. These weapons were meant to go for war so as to gain political power. Each country struggled to make the most dangerous weapons as compared to those of other country. This would create fear among other countries hence political recognition would be achieved (Walker, 189). It is during these periods when dangerous weapons such as nuclear bombs were made in various countries.
The other common characteristic of the two periods is formation of alliances. Countries formed coalitions during the period for various purposes. One of the reasons for the alliances is for the purposes of trade (Tong, 107). The countries that had formed alliances could trade with one another. However, countries in different alliances could not trade.
However, there are differences between the other imperial periods and the cold war period. During the cold war, there were only two major alliances (Walker, 78). The countries either support Russia of United States of America. These two countries had different ideologies that conflicted. Therefore the countries that supported communism were allied to Russia while those in support of capitalism supported United States. In other imperial periods, there were more than two alliances and ideologies did not influence the alliances.
The other difference is that in other imperial periods, actual wars took place. However, there were no actual wars during the cold war. Cold war was characterized by accumulation of dangerous weapons and threats of war. However, rarely did the wars occur. In other imperial periods, war happened that usually caused deaths of many people. Generally, even though the imperial periods had common features with the cold war, there were differences of the two periods.

Works cited.

Graham Greene. Quiet American. Random house, 2010. Print.
Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History. New York, NY: Holt, 1995. Print.
Tong, Q S. Critical Zone: A Forum of Chinese and Western Knowledge. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press, 2006. Print.