The Sympathizer

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-21

Chapters 22-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary

The General will not allow the narrator to accompany Bon on the mission in Thailand until he has proven himself on the battlefield. The General insinuates that the narrator must kill Sonny. If the narrator kills Sonny, then he may be allowed to accompany Bon in Thailand. Man sends word, via encoded message in a letter from his Parisian aunt, strongly advising that the narrator not come to Thailand

The narrator dreads killing Sonny, scared to “cross the threshold separating those who had killed from those who had not” (266). He discusses his hesitation with Bon over a billiards game, and Bon tells him not to feel bad, “It’s not murder…it’s assassination” (267). Bon sees a difference in military personnel killing for political reasons.

Later, the narrator heads to Lana’s apartment for solace on the matter of Sonny. Lana tries to normalize it by saying that we all fantasize about killing people (or at least people dying) from time to time. Just as it seems that Lana and the narrator are about to consummate their relationship with sex, the narrator abruptly leaves: “There’s something I must do. Before I can do what needs to be done here” (270).

We quickly realize that the narrator is leaving to kill Sonny. The narrator drives the hour to Sonny’s apartment, taking deep breaths and rehearsing the plan Bon and he had discussed. Sonny lets him into the apartment, and he begins talking about what he thinks the narrator is there to discuss: Ms. Mori. Sonny is apologetic that the narrator had to find out about his and Ms. Mori’s relationship in that way, and Sonny’s “unexpected and seemingly genuine concern for [the narrator’s] welfare caught [him] off guard (272). Sonny goes on to explain his deep love for Ms. Mori, that he has never met anyone like her in his life, and how he would like to raise children with her. Sonny’s graciousness and warmth is maddening to the narrator, considering the circumstance. The narrator suggests they talk about politics instead of love, asking, “What if I told you I was a Communist?...I am your ally. I have been an agent for the opposition and the revolution for years. What do you think about that?” (275). Sonny is furious, and does not believe him. “I had worn my mask for so long, and here was my opportunity to take it off, safely. I had stumbled to this action instinctively, out of a feeling that was not unique to me. I cannot be the only one who believes that if other just saw who I really was, then I would be understood and perhaps loved” (267). The narrator shoots at Sonny from close range; somehow missing from five feet away. On the third shot, however, the narrator hits him behind the ear and he tumbles to the ground. The narrator completely bungles Sonny’s murder, but he does finish the job—even touching Sonny’s eye as Bon instructed to ensure that he was not just playing dead. Then the narrator leaves Sonny’s building and vomits immediately.

Chapter 17 Summary

Having completed his mission of killing Sonny, the General provides the narrator with his plane ticket to Thailand. We learn that, immediately after killing Sonny, the narrator went back to Lana’s apartment and had sex with her. Aside from the narrator, there are three people in the narrator’s group on the plane headed toward Thailand: a grizzled captain, an affectless lieutenant, and Bon. The narrator is unable to sleep without thinking of either the crapulent major or Sonny—he is wracked with guilt.

The plane lands and the group meets with Claude, already in Thailand and waiting for them at the airport. Knowing this mission in Thailand is likely to be their last, that night Claude takes the group on a last-night outing to a strip club. Bon and the narrator are unenthusiastic about the strip club so they separate from the group and head to the movies instead, where The Hamlet is playing.

Watching The Hamlet in that darkened theater, the narrator is swept away by the magic of cinema in spite of himself: “God help me if I did not also find myself caught up in the story and the sheer spectacle” (286). The narrator cringes watching the rape scene that he protested, seeing it here for the first time. Regardless of what the narrator thinks of him, he admits that the Auteur “had hammered into existence a thing of beauty and horror, exhilarating for some and deadly for others, a creation whose purpose was destruction” (288). As the credits roll, the narrator is furious to learn that he was not mentioned in the credits: “Failing to do away with me in real life, he had succeeded in murdering me in fiction, obliterating me utterly in a way that I was becoming more and more acquainted with” (289).

With his mind on the General, we learn in a flashback that the General had confronted the narrator about pursuing his daughter. “How could you ever believe we would allow our daughter to be with someone of your kind?” the General asks. “You’re a fine young man, but are also, in case you have not noticed, a bastard” (291). The narrator is deeply pained by the General referring to him as a “bastard,” that ugly word so frequently used against him.

Returning to the present, the group heads from Bangkok to their camp near the border of Laos. There a group of bedraggled looking guerrilla soldiers, the last of the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam, are training. They meet with the admiral overseeing the camp, who says that, even though God is indeed on their side, if they die on this mission, “know that those you save will be grateful to you” (294).

Chapter 18 Summary

The narrator and his group—Bon, the grizzled captain, the affectless lieutenant—are joined by four other men: a philosophical medic, a Hmong scout, and two marines. Foreshadowing their impending doom, the men are not outfitted with bulletproof vests, but with pictures of the Virgin Mary to wear over their hearts. The narrator says goodbye to Claude, and the group sets off under a sliver of moon.

On the second night, each of the men takes turns keeping watch while the others sleep. The affectless lieutenant goes to urinate in the woods; on his way back, he steps on a landmine, blasting his leg off and leaving him on the brink of death. Knowing that he will not survive, the grizzled captain pinches the lieutenant’s nostrils until he dies. Unable to bury the body there, the narrator must carry the lieutenant’s disembodied leg while the others carry his body and his possessions. The narrator, as he carries the leg, thinks of the death of his father. The group walks for two hours, then buries the body. The ghosts of Sonny and the crapulent major stand over the lieutenant’s fresh grave, morbidly poking fun by asking whether the narrator believes the lieutenant’s ghost will have one leg or two.

As the group crosses the Mekong River, they are ambushed. The grizzled captain is the first to be killed with a shot to the head. The rest of the group are either captured or killed; somehow, Bon and the narrator both manage to stay alive. “The mission was over,” the narrator says, “and my plot had worked no matter how clumsily or inadvertently. I had succeeded in saving him, but only, as it turned out, from death” (307). The two of them are captured by the Communists.

Chapters 16-18 Analysis

In chapter 16, the narrator returns to questions of God and religion. Once again, the narrator finds truth in contradiction: “I need not look in the mirror or at the faces of my fellow men to find a likeness to God. I need only look at their selves and inside my own to realize we would not be killers if God Himself was not one, too” (267). As the illegitimate son of a Catholic priest, who forced himself upon a thirteen-year-old Vietnamese girl (the narrator’s mother)—of course the narrator has a complicated, cynical relationship to God and religion.

As the narrator watches The Hamlet alongside a Thai audience, we are reminded that movies—Hollywood’s propaganda—are not just for the United States, but the world at large. When the final credits of the movie roll, and the narrator fails to see his name, the idea that lack of representation is equivalent to death is emphasized: “Failing to do away with me in real life, he had succeeded in murdering me in fiction, obliterating me utterly in a way that I was becoming more and more acquainted with” (289).

In these later chapters of the book, there is some blurring of the distinctions between North and South Vietnamese. The narrator feels doubly guilty that with The Hamlet he failed both of his bosses: “I had failed at the one task both [Communist] Man and the [anti-Communist] General could agree on, the subversion of the Movie and all it represented, namely our misrepresentation” (290). When the narrator arrives at the Thai training camp, he is shocked to see that the anti-Communist resistance looks strikingly like the Viet Cong, which is to say frazzled, haggard, and wild. The admiral, another anti-Communist, reminds the men of Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and refers to himself as Uncle, also like Ho Chi Minh. The blurring of opposing sides does not imply peace, that they share a common cause; rather, the blurring of lines highlights the futility of any wartime effort or affiliation.

There seems to be only one identity line in The Sympathizer that, once crossed, there is no return: the line separating “those who have killed, and those who have not” (266). Once the narrator kills Sonny in chapter 16, he is irrevocably changed. The scene just before Sonny’s murder seems designed to make the narrator feel as badly as possible, with Sonny going on about his deep love for Ms. Mori: “Love is being able to talk to someone else without effort, without hiding, and at the same time to feel absolutely comfortable not saying a word” (273). After killing Sonny, the ghostly figures of the crapulent major and Sonny appear to the narrator even more frequently, taunting and accusing him. They appear on the plane to Thailand: “Every time I closed my eyes, I saw either the crapulent major’s face or Sonny’s, which I could not bear to look at for long” (281). They appear in the night: “Sonny and the crapulent major laughed faintly as they watched me from outside that snow globe and shook it with their giant hands” (299). They jokingly ask what form the ghost of the lieutenant will take (304). The narrator mourns that, while he sees ghosts, his mother never appears to him: “I remember the injustice of how my mother never came to visit me after her death no matter how many times I cried out for her, unlike Sonny and the crapulent major, whom I would carry with me forever” (305). Ghosts in The Sympathizer cannot be summoned; they take on a life of their own only as manifestations of intense guilt.