The Sympathizer

Overview

Set as the flashback in a coerced confession of a political prisoner, the book tells the story of the South Vietnamese Government in 1975 and subsequent events in American exile in Los Angeles, through the eyes of a half-Vietnamese, half-French undercover communist agent. The spy remains unnamed throughout the novel from the fall of Saigon, to refugee camps and relocation in Los Angeles, to his time as a film consultant in the Philippines, and finally to his return and subsequent imprisonment in Vietnam. A Vietnamese reviewer noted that finally Americans have a chance to gain a new perspective on the war, one that is in contrast to the one provided by Hollywood myth makers.

The narrator has a divided nature: he is mixed blood, raised in Vietnam but educated in the U.S., and friend to South Vietnamese military officials and soldiers and a United States CIA agent while leaking information to the North Vietnamese forces. When the Fall of Saigon can no longer be denied, he arranges for a last minute flight to secure the safety of himself, his best friend Bon, and the General he advises. While they are being evacuated, the group is fired upon while boarding; Bon's wife and child are killed along with many others.

In Los Angeles, the General and his former officers weaken quickly, disillusioned by a foreign culture and their rapid decline in status. The General attempts to reclaim some semblance of honor by opening his own business, a liquor store. The continuous emasculation and dehumanization within American society prompts the General to draft plans for his army's return to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the narrator has taken a clerical position at Occidental College, begins having an affair with Ms. Mori, his Japanese-American colleague and then the General's eldest daughter, Lana. He also sends letters in invisible ink to Man, his fellow revolutionary and handler. When he receives an offer to consult for a Hollywood film on the Vietnam War called The Hamlet, he sees it as an opportunity to show multiple sides of the War and to give the Vietnamese a voice in its historical portrayal. However, working on set in the Philippines, he not only fails to complicate the misleading, romantically American representation of the war, but almost dies when explosives detonate long before they should. There is skepticism as to whether the explosion was a mistake since the director greatly dislikes the narrator.

After he recovers, against Man's insistence that he stay in the U.S. and continue his work as a mole, the narrator decides to accompany the exiled troops back into Vietnam. Before he returns, he executes one of the General's officers, Captain "Sonny," who he learns had an affair with Ms. Mori while he was in the Philippines. During his mission in Vietnam, he manages to barely save Bon's life. However, it is to no heroically avail as they are captured and imprisoned.

The encampment is where the protagonist writes his confession, a plea for absolution addressed to the commandant who is directed by the commissar. However, rather than writing what his communist comrades wish to hear, the protagonist writes a complex and nuanced reflection of the events that have led him to his imprisonment. He refuses to show one side; he leaves nothing out (even his painful memories of a childhood without a father or of his first experience masturbating); and he sympathizes with the many perspectives of a complicated conflict that has divided a nation. While he still considers himself a communist and revolutionary, he acknowledges his friendships with those who are supposedly his enemy and he understands all soldiers as honorably fighting for their home. When his confession drafts are rejected, he is finally brought before the commissar.

The commissar, the man with no face, turns out to be his direct superior Man. Yet, this does not stop Man from subjecting him to torture as part of his reeducation. First, he must admit his crime of being compliant in the torturing and raping of a female communist agent. Then he must realize that he took part, albeit unconsciously, in the murder of his father. Lastly, he must learn Man's final lesson that a revolution fought for independence and freedom could make those things worth less than nothing, that nothingness itself was more precious than independence and freedom. The novel ends with the narrator among a crowd of Boat People at sea.

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