Study Guide to The Ugly American by Burdick and Lederer

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645420453
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Guías de estudio
• Subtopic: Guías de estudio

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Burdick and Lederer’s The Ugly American, with commentary on Nationalism, Communism, foreign policy, and diplomacy across America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. As a classic account and document of America’s role in French Colonialism, The Ugly American was frequently referenced by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in their conversations on foreign policy, and hit bestseller lists when it was nearly banned overseas. Moreover, the political novel shows how time and war impact cross-cultural relationships. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Burdick and Lederer’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

BURDICK AND LEDERER

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER ONE

LUCKY, LUCKY LOU #1

In fictitious Sarkhan, United States Ambassador Louis Sears suspects he is being caricatured by a leading Sarkhanese newspaper but can't be sure. Marking time here until his real political reward, a federal judgeship, comes through, Sears can't speak the language of the country he is supposed to be influencing. News comes that an American, John Colvin, has been beaten unconscious. Characteristically, Sears accepts a rumor that Colvin was molesting native women, but the truth is far different.

A former OSS agent in Sarkhan, Colvin has returned to help the people. He is preparing powdered milk, when Deong, his former devoted native friend and ally during OSS days, and now a Communist, appears. Deong, by a trick, convinces the native women that Colvin was going to put an aphrodisiac in the milk.

Afraid of losing a probable American loan, the newspaper publishes a flattering editorial. The Ambassador is pleased, but still Colvin will be sent home.

Comment: This book is an angry novel with a deadly warning. Yet its authors never fall into the trap always open to writers with a message. They think in terms of story and action, not in a series of lectures. Their novel may intend to reform, but it is excellent entertainment, and few readers will put it down. Slashing, blunt, and hard hitting, it is a bombshell.

If you can't communicate, you cannot influence, and ambassadors are supposed to influence. These truths are self-evident everywhere, apparently, save in the United States Foreign Service. We are reminded of them in the opening chapter of this story. But we see this particular example of stupidity in foreign policy only if we are interested in the predicament of a fat man. Will he ever be able to understand how he has been insulted by a cartoon if he cannot read the language of the country in which he represents the United States?

The art of presenting ideas through narration is everywhere exhibited in this chapter. The importance of communication to influence, for example, is shown and not spelled out. So, too, is another American diplomatic failure, equally serious in the minds of the authors. This is the placing of mediocre men where talent is needed. That the State Department so fills its embassy staffs is a fact conveyed to the reader long before it is specifically expressed. We do not need to wait for Deong's reference to "clerks" and Prince Ngong's use of the word "stupid." The point has already been made by Sears' political-plum appointment to a post he didn't want in a country he couldn't locate.

Other features of fine writing are seen in this chapter. One is inference made almost inevitable by contrast. The other is shock or emotion produced by detailed description. These authors believe that lack of communication is a tragic flaw in our foreign policy. Yet ignorance of language is not the only barrier to communication. Too wide a gap is placed between the Embassy and the natives. The beautifully maintained embassy grounds end in a wrought iron fence. An even higher fence lies between its inhabitants and those women plodding to market outside, as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. There is not enough understanding on one side, not enough acceptance on the other. And so far we see no attempt made to vault the fence.

Certainly an example of realism, this book evokes vivid pictures in its detailed descriptions. The authors show a clinical observation of life as they describe the actions of their characters. But theirs is not the unselective zeal of a Theodore Dreiser which drives them to report everything they observe. And certainly they are not guilty of determinism which takes all choice away from the characters. The faults here "lie not in the stars" but in the United States Foreign Service, especially when it comes to appointments.

Their use of detailed description, though vivid, is comparatively infrequent. It is not used everywhere, but only to increase the savagery of a few scenes. The bullet blowing out the monk's brains, and the pin driven twice through Colvin's flesh are examples of this.

BURDICK AND LEDERER

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER TWO

LUCKY, LUCKY LOU #2

The Russian Ambassador to Sarkhan, Louis Krupitzyn, is a marked contrast to Sears. His life is devoted to the diplomatic service. In preparation for this particular post, he has studied Sarkhanese diet, ballet and music, and Buddhism.

In Sarkhan he first cements alliances and then turns his attention to the enemy. Taking advantage of official America's ignorance of Sarkhanese, he steals credit for American generosity in time of famine. Thousands of bags of free rice arriving from America are labeled by his agents as gifts from Russia - and none of the Americans present can read the label.

In a letter from Krupitzyn to Moscow, he asks for information about a Catholic priest, Father Finian, working as an agitator in Burma.

Comment: Is it a novel? If so, where is the hero? The reader will ask this many times as he continues. But the question will first arise in Chapter Two. The abrupt change in scene will not necessarily bring it about, for the novelist's canvas is a broad one, and accommodates many characters. Neither will the introduction of a new story, for again the novel affords its author room for subplots. And presumably Louis Krupitzyn could have been introduced merely to accentuate Sears' stupidity, if a wise man can be a foil for a fool. Yet the second chapter sets a seal of finality upon the first which makes us doubt whether either are subordinate to anything. Chapter One ends with Colvin hanging over the proverbial cliff. Will he plummet back into the obscurity of Wisconsin? Or will he climb up to renew his one-man campaign against Communism, with a different kind of eye out for Deong? His name does not appear in Chapter Two, and we begin to wonder about the word, "novel." Were we to know that we would never again see the name Krupitzyn, our confusion would increase.

There are reasons for wonder. People who should know contradict each other on the nature of this book. The Chicago Sunday Tribune referred to it as an "angry novel." Conversely, Richard F. Shepherd, writing in the New York Times, December 4, 1965, calls it a series of short stores. If the latter, at least most of them possess the same theme, and one worthy of a novel. It is the impact of official American mediocrity, stupidity, and arrogant insularism upon a sensitive Asiatic nature in areas marked by lack of education, capital, and industry. If we accept this as a theme, then perhaps the hero is actually the homely engineer who bears that title, but who appears in only two chapters and is mentioned only in two others.

Be that as it may, Chapter Two shows us both authors as masters of narrative writing techniques, whether they be scene, summary or description. The art of condensation illustrated in the second, for example, even affords an argument for the "short story" theory of this book. In one seven-line paragraph Louis is transformed from a child witnessing his parents' murder to an adolescent hating the group they represented. And the killing itself might have been a scene represented within a picture frame. In another way, however, the writers swing back toward their role of angry novelists with a message. They again employ contrast and action to stress America's dangerous incompetence in foreign affairs. Nor does the chapter leave us with the final single impression of Krupitzyn's ability, as a short story should. Instead, we wonder about Father Finian. How will Louis fare against a foe he respects as much as he gleefully despises Sears?

BURDICK AND LEDERER

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER THREE

NINE FRIENDS

An encounter as Navy chaplain with a fanatically communist American Marine drove Father Finian to study Lenin and his disciples. Now he welcomes a Jesuit assignment to Burma which will give him an opportunity to combat what he regards as another example of the occasional diabolical testing of men's souls. He learns to speak Burmese, suffers the agonies of dysentery, finds disciples among the Burmese, and overcomes native suspicions of the white man.

He publishes a native paper in which he reprints written statements of contempt and cruelty toward peasants, authored by leading Communists. Attempts by Communists to suppress the paper are futile, as is their effort to keep secret from Finian the arrival of their star troubleshooter, Vinich, whom Father Finian exposes.

Comment: The charge of Deong is refuted in this chapter. Some Americans do know the power of an idea. The tragedy lies, these authors imply, in the fact that only unofficial Americans recognize thi...