The Quiet American: A Bakhtinian Study

Abstract

This research studies Graham Greene's The Quiet American in the light of dialogic discourse. Through the three main characters, the novel speaks the voices of minor people of Vietnam after the Indo-China war. It describes the socio-political, socio- economic conditionand other contemporary social aspects of small town, Saigon. The dialogic tension between the main characters and their roles in the novel are too descriptive. In today's globalized world any country cannot remain untouched by other countries’ affairs. Vietnam is one of the good examples of this. When Vietnam is broken, the developed countries want to help her but their inner intention is different. So, Greene wants to clarify this by writing a novel with his own real experiences, though he is not fully successful due to the some problems as an English reporter. However, he is successful in showing the contemporary Vietnamese society, though he lacks to show the panic situation of people everyday life.