Graham Greene’s Childless Fathers pp 54-64 | Cite as
‘When You Escape to a Desert’ The Quiet American
Abstract
The first and most obvious question that should be answered in this chapter concerns the inclusion of The Quiet American in a study which deals with the theme of fatherhood in Greene’s novels. None of the major characters in the novel has fathered a child, and yet I would suggest that the theme of fatherhood functions here by its very absence. The discussion of the novel in this study revolves around the theme of non-fatherhood, of sterility. Before venturing into a thematic analysis of the novel, I would like to review the major categories of critical views regarding the theme of the novel, and explain why I have found most of them unsatisfactory.
Keywords
Fair Play Dead Child Divine Intervention Opium Pipe Religious SensePreview
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Notes and References
- 1.John Atkins, Graham Greene (London: Calder and Boyars, 1957; revised edn 1966) p.232.Google Scholar
- 4.Miriam Allott, ‘The Moral Situation in The Quiet American’, in Robert O. Evans (ed.), Graham Greene: Some Critical Considerations ( Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1963 ) p. 190.Google Scholar
- 5.Miriam Allott, ‘The Moral Situation in The Quiet American’, p. 169.Google Scholar
- 8.Robert O. Evans, ‘Existentialism in Greene’s The Quiet American’, Modern Fiction Studies, Graham Greene Special Number, 3 (Autumn 1957 ), pp. 244–5.Google Scholar
- 9.Kunkel, The Labyrinthine Ways of Graham Greene, p. 148.Google Scholar
- 13.Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951; reprinted London: Heinemann, 1959) p. 1.Google Scholar
- 15.R. E. Hughes, ‘The Quiet American: The Case Reopened’, Renascence, 12 (1959) p. 42.Google Scholar