Sympathizing with Only a Minority of “Minorities”

Throughout “The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen represents the struggles of both Vietnamese-Americans as well as people of mixed race. The narrator speaks at length both humorously and seriously about the unique treatment he receives both for his country of origin and his mixed parentage. For example, much of his experience working on “The Hamlet” deals with his attempts to improve the racist undertones of the movie. Ultimately, however, he finds that he was “dense” and “deluded” to believe his “work mattered” due to the dismissive attitude of the Auteur that “no one gives a shit” about being sensitive to the people of Vietnam (133).

Yet, despite the critical tone used to depict this method of dismissive racism, the narrator’s own narrative often dismisses the plight of other “minorities.” The most extensive example is women. Most of the female characters depicted in his confession are wives, mothers, or objects of the narrator’s sexual fascination. Not one that appears in the novel stands on her own, instead being connected to the men in their lives.

Nguyen depicts the narrator as unaware of this fact, considering he is critical of some negative view of women. For example, he criticizes how the Korean school girl’s ao dai “had sent many a Western writer into near-pederastic fantasies about the nubile bodies… This the writers apparently took as an implicit metaphor for our country as a whole, wanton and yet withdrawn” (114). The narrator is critical of how Western writers view Vietnamese women as sexual objects, merely hidden from view, yet his own view of Lana, a Vietnamese woman who grew up with him, is still largely sexualized and objectifying. Of Lana, he says “she returned in my fantasies many times over the subsequent weeks. Regardless of what I wanted or deserved, she inevitably appeared in a white ao dai” (124). This duality, of both criticizing Western men for lusting after ao dai-clad Vietnamese girls while also lusting after Lana in her ao dai show the narrator’s uninformed and unaware view of women. It appears he doesn’t even realize that his views so obviously align with the views of the Western writers he criticizes.

The characterization of the narrator as hypocritical appears throughout the novel. His alliances being unclear is a large motif, as he continuously sympathizes both with the Communists and his friends who are against it. For this reason, it is clear that Nguyen purposefully includes his confusing view on women to further the theme of hypocrisy, and to continue to characterize the narrator as uncertain in his views. This can be seen even further in how his disrespect for women leads to one of his biggest regrets in the novel – the murder of Sonny.

The narrator’s relationship with Ms. Mori is one of his most significant female relationships, however, it is fraught with uncertainty. He tells her that he “think[s] [he’s] in love with [her],” but does not write to her while he is in the Philippines (76). This leads to her relationship with Sonny, and the narrator’s subsequent decision to murder him, a decision which literally haunts the narrator for the rest of the novel. Had the narrator respected Ms. Mori’s right to make her own decisions, he would not have to carry that weight – much like many of his decisions in the novel.