A review by thebookdog
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

challenging dark funny informative sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

 
** spoiler alert ** Trigger warning: This post contains mentions of rape, sexual assault, and violence.

I finished reading ‘The Sympathizer’ this evening, and I am struggling to process the last couple of chapters. Before I talk about what bothered me, I would like to state for the record that I found the book enlightening, and this is my first ‘Vietnam War Novel’, which I learnt is a genre by itself. The book made me look up, and read more about the Vietnam War, the fall of Saigon, and the draconian acts committed by all sides. Perhaps, the narrator would agree with me for including the expression ‘...by all sides’. The book was what the synopsis promised. In parts, it was a comedy, and in many parts, it was a tragedy. The writing burned with the fire of creativity. Until I started reading the last few chapters, I almost had no complaints. But what bothered me almost at the end was how a rape was written.

Here is some context: the nameless narrator of the novel fought with the Auteur (a filmmaker in the novel) with all his soul, about the inclusion of a rape scene in the movie that was being made on the Vietnam War. I found myself rooting for the narrator because I thought he made a valid point about the way the rape was portrayed in the movie, and above all, he questioned the need to include such a scene in the first place for mere shock value. While the narrator was a man of questionable character, his question was the most reasonable. So, what shocked me was the author, who —through the narrator — reprimanded Hollywood for exploiting wars, and their portrayal of the oppressed, and the survivors, included a chapter at the end in which a Communist agent was raped. As an involved reader, I didn’t find that decision of this author’s very different from the Auteur’s. I was appalled even more by that chapter in which the rape was narrated from a man’s point of view, and it was not much different from how the rape scene was shot for the movie. The chapter and the scene were classic examples of men’s one-dimensional understanding of rape.

I read many reviews, but there wasn’t any mention about this particular chapter. So, I extended my search using a particular set of key words, and I stumbled upon this article. https://www.publicbooks.org/rememberi...

Here is an excerpt:
The interviewer: ‘The Sympathizer’ ends with a rape scene. What are the ethics of including rape as a plot point in a novel?

The author: The novel is divided into two parts: the first part is the farce, and the second part is the tragedy. The farce ends with the making of the movie in the Philippines, which includes a rape scene. It’s filmed during that time period, but it’s a delayed mechanism in the novel: we don’t get to see that until later, and it’s also a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen in the narrator’s own mind. I wanted to put the cinematic rape in there because those things happen in the American imagination of the war, and I find them very problematic.

This exposes me to a reasonable criticism: if you found it to be so problematic in Hollywood films, why did you replicate it in your novel, both in terms of depicting it cinematically and in the plot of your own novel, in the narrator’s story as well? That’s a very good question, and a very good criticism. I felt that I needed to include those scenes because of the character that I had constructed, and because of the spy narrative that I had chosen. The Sympathizer is a first-person narrative from the point of view of someone who is very masculine, very misogynistic, very sexist. From his point of view, there would be no way to depict something like this that would offer a critical take on the rape, so the reader just has to see it happen.

Why did it have to be rape? Could I have chosen something else? Two-thirds of the way through the novel, I realized who my narrator was. I liked him a lot, even though he was a complicated character. But I also had to understand that he was misogynistic and masculine, and that I was enjoying that as a writer, which made me question why I was enjoying that as a writer. I wanted to show that the misogyny and the sexism that he takes pleasure in, which some readers presumably also take pleasure in, exists on a spectrum.

At one extreme of that is going to be the most atrocious expression of masculinity and misogyny, which is sexual violence. He had to be confronted with that, I had to be confronted with that, and readers who took pleasure in the objectification of women that he participates in had to be confronted with that. Once I had made certain formal decisions—spy novel, first-person narration, masculine and misogynist narrator—a rape was, I felt, the logical conclusion. If I didn’t go there, I would be making a mistake, and if I did go there, I would be making a lot of people uncomfortable—but that is actually what they should feel.

End of excerpt.

There are quite a few problems with the author’s view. My main problem though is the readers, who are misogynistic, sexist, and masculine would forget the rape just like the nameless narrator who had conveniently pushed the memory to the darkest part of his mind. Even after encountering such a cruel act, during his time in the USA, he continued to objectify women, including his quasi love-interest Sofia, and the General’s daughter Lana. Despite being a witness of a woman being dehumanised, the character arc proves that the nameless narrator didn’t change for the better. His resistance to not include the rape scene in the movie, now I realise, was his feeble effort to absolve himself of the guilt that he was harbouring, and not because he found the portrayal of women problematic. So, the author’s decision to include the rape at the end comes across as an element included for shock value, and that makes me sad. As a reader, as a woman, I place a lot of faith in politically sensitive authors like Viet Thanh Nguyen, but they continue to fail me when it comes to representation. Like the nameless narrator who failed to get the right representation for his people in the movie that the Auteur made, the author failed as well. 
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