The Sympathizer: A Dialectical Reading (original) (raw)

PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2018

Abstract

Viet thanh nguyen's award-winning novel, the sympathizer, interpellates an internal vietnamese reader alongside an american (or Anglo) reader through a dialectical appeal subsequently developed into a complex plot. The novel simultaneously demolishes the legitimacy of the American dream and that of the revolutionary communist one. Nguyen launches this two-sided attack with ironic digs whose target oscillates between Americans and Vietnamese. The critique begins lightheartedly when the Vietnamese-born, communist narrator concedes that the English of his American friend from the Central Intelligence Agency, Claude, is excellent—a point the narrator makes “only because the same could not be said” of Claude's fellow Americans (5). In the same disarming manner, he notes, “Even if” the narrator's Vietnamese compatriots “found themselves in Heaven,” they “would find occasion to remark that this was not as warm as Hell” (24). Then he turns back to “America,” which “would not be ...

Anjali Prabhu hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Anjali know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.