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QA Sample Essay on Fowler’s Character
Addicted to Love (and Opium)
While Fowler doesn’t show any of the stereotypical signs of an opium addict, he clearly enjoys the drug, as did Graham Greene. Like Greene, Fowler is a dynamic, philosophical, reclusive figure who tries to confront harsh realities. Perhaps it's because he thinks so much about the problems of the world that he feels the need to escape from these problems, to become a recluse from the propaganda and the bombing that it's his job to report on. Fowler doesn’t only use opium to escape from political problems; he also uses it to escapes from his personal problems, in particular, the ones connected to his romantic life.
In the first chapter we see the complications of Fowler’s personal life and how opium fits into his escape from them. Phuong is in his apartment waiting for his rival, Pyle, who he suspects he has just helped to murder. Fowler thinks of Phuong as “the hiss of steam” and the pleasures of the night (4). She then asks him if he wants her to prepare his opium pipe, like she used to do when they were together. The opium dulls him to the pain of having lost her to Pyle, and allows him to drift into an Orientalist fantasy in which he compares Phuong to a bird and notices that her skin is "the colour of dark amber" (5). He remembers verses by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who was also a user of opium, as well as a lover of the exotic and the erotic. The verses, which are from "Invitation au Voyage" (which one might punningly translate as “Invitation to the Trip”) talk about love "In a country that resembles you” (Au pays qui te ressemble) (6). The you applies to his love-interst, the beautiful Phuong, yet also to Fowler himself, as he's in a faraway country he identifies with.
Fowler’s indulgence in poetry and opium isn't completely dissociated from reality, however, since it includes ships on the waterfront and canals in the north of the country: he imagines the ships in Saigon Harbour in terms of Baudelaire's phrase "dont l'humeur est vagabonde / of vagabond mood"; also, just after thinking of Phuong's skin as having "the fragrance of opium," he remembers that he "had seen the flowers on her dress beside the canals in the north" (6-7). This reference to the canals subtly anticipates the dead bodies he later sees in the canal near Phat Diem, which is the first time he says to himself, "I hate war" (45). Phuong is thus subtly linked to the beauty of the country and to the moment he sees this innocent beauty destroyed.
That political problems are a major factor in Fowler’s opium addiction is more strongly suggested in the final part of the novel. After being deeply troubled by the image of the dead mother and child in a ditch neat Phat Diem, and after living through a harrowing night with soldiers on the road back from Tanyin (soldiers he ends up inadvertently helping to kill), Fowler travels north to Haiphong and Hanoi. Here he flies in a bomber and sees how the pilot, Trouin, drops bombs indiscriminately on the Vietnamese below him. Fowler asks Trouin if the sampan below was Vietminh, and Trouin says he doesn’t know. Back in Hanoi, Fowler and Trouin go to a brothel. While Trouin has to live with the memory of what he's just done, Fowler starts in on the opium, which allows him a psychological vacation from aerial bombardment and all it represents.
Fowler’s inability to escape the political world is particularly acute in the final pages of the novel, where he confronts Pyle and gives him one last chance to turn away from the use of violence. Pyle is clearly implicated in the bombing incident in Place Garnier, and in Fowler’s mind this incident is linked to the violence he's seen elsewhere: in London during the Blitz (39), in Phat Diem, on the road from Tanyin, and in the bomber near Haiphong. This time the violence is too close to the woman he loves, and to her fellow citizens. After Pyle refuses to reject violence against the Vietnamese, Fowler gives the nod to the trishaw driver and Pyle is murdered.
At the end of the novel Greene presents us with a final scene reminiscent of the opening scene where Fowler and Phuong were waiting for Pyle. Toward the end of the first chapter, Phuong learns that Pyle is dead (although she doesn’t know that Fowler had anything to do with his death). She quickly shifts her allegiance back to Fowler, and prepares his bowl of opium once again. Fowler then goes to bed with her, waking up with his hand between her smooth legs, wondering if he was the only one who was bothered by Pyle’s death (14). In the final chapter, Phuong once again prepares Fowler’s pipe, and he once again goes to bed with her, this time pulling her down into the bed, high as a kite. Not only has Fowler solved one of his problems related to political violence (Pyle and his very quiet, very covert American aggression); he's also dispatched the man who was going to steal the love of his life and the consolation of his declining years. This time Fowler takes the opium to intensify his pleasure in bed, yet also to forget about how he managed such a neat solution to his problems.
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