Vietnamese American Viet Thanh Nguyen: A Summary

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The Sympathizer, by Vietnamese-American Viet Thanh Nguyen, gives the account of a nameless protagonist—a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army, who remains in a Southern Vietnamese community while exiled in U.S. The novel is set in the timeframe of before and after the fall of Saigon, which happens to be the first scene of the book. The unnamed protagonist is a half-Vietnamese, half-French spy and gives the reader his experience on the South Vietnamese Government in 1975. The spy flees to the United States after the fall of Saigon with the General he has been assigned to spy on. While in the U.S, the protagonist struggles with the question of where his loyalties truly lie as he is forced to confront the binary of his own self as both French and Vietnamese. He is essentially stuck in two different ideological worlds. …show more content…
The protagonist struggles to balance his new life in America while being a spy and reporting to his Communist superiors in Vietnam. In the novel, as the fall of Saigon takes place, the narrator, his best friend Bon, and the General he was working with escaped the war. During the evacuation, they were attacked, and Bon’s wife and child are killed. They fled to Los Angeles, where they all experience a culture shock. The General feels dehumanized and turns to alcohol as a coping mechanism. The narrator began working at a university and had sexual relations with a staff member. During this time, the spy continues communicating with Man, his handler back in Vietnam. During a later explosion incident, the narrator defies Man’s orders to stay in the US and accompanies the exiled troops back to Vietnam. He and Bon were united again in battle, and the narrator saves his
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