The Sympathizer: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The narrator’s notes to the Auteur allow for some change in how the Vietnamese will be represented in the film. The Auteur accepts the notes about how people will scream and includes three Vietnamese characters with speaking parts—an older brother, a younger sister, and a little brother whose parents have been killed by “King Cong,” or the Viet Cong. The older brother, Binh, hates King Cong and loves his American rescuers, whom he serves as a translator. He will eventually be killed by King Cong. His sister, Mai, will fall in love with the idealistic Sergeant Jay Bellamy. She will then be kidnapped and raped by King Cong, which becomes the justification for the Green Berets destroying King Cong. The little boy will be “crowned” with a Yankees cap in the final scene and airlifted out of his homeland. Sergeant Bellamy will take him back to his wealthy family in St. Louis, where he will be given a golden retriever with his nickname—Danny Boy.

Violet tells the narrator that no Vietnamese actors were cast because those who auditioned were amateurs, and the professionals overacted. The narrator hears this as her telling him that the Vietnamese can’t represent themselves, so they’ll be represented by other Asians. The narrator reports on the cast to his Parisian aunt. He includes “glazed Polaroids” of himself with them and another that he took “with the reluctant Auteur.” He also sends Polaroids of the refugee camp and its inhabitants, as well as newspaper clippings that the General gave him before he left for the Philippines. They are stories about refugees fleeing Vietnam in “leaky little boats” to sail to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Some of the boats sank when confronted by storms and pirates.

Most of the film extras play civilians who may also be Viet Cong, and who will probably be killed for being Viet Cong or for being suspected of being Viet Cong. Most of the extras are already familiar with this role, having experienced it in real life. The next category of extras is the soldiers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. All of the men want this role, even though these characters are also regarded as possible enemies who’ll likely be killed. There are many veterans from the South Vietnamese Army among the extras, so the narrator has no problem casting for this role.

The most difficult category for the narrator to cast is for that of the National Liberation Front guerilla, or the Viet Cong. No one wants this role. Money ends up solving the problem. After some strong persuasion from the narrator, Violet doubles the salary for these extras. What they find repugnant about the role is that they’ll simulate the torture of Binh and the rape of Mai. The narrator’s relationship with the Auteur unravels when he asks the director if the rape is necessary. The director insists that the scene will give movie audiences the shock they need. Moreover, rape is something that happens in war and he has an obligation to show that, even though a “sellout” like the narrator would disagree.

The narrator is stunned by the Auteur’s “unprovoked attack.” When the narrator denies being a sellout, the Auteur snorts and says that that’s exactly what one of the narrator’s people would call someone who would help a white man like him. Or, maybe, “loser” is a better term, he offers. The narrator agrees that he’s a loser for believing the promises that America made to him and his people. The Auteur says that the narrator’s opinions don’t matter. The narrator responds by inviting the Auteur to perform fellatio on him, which leads to the director threatening to gouge out the narrator’s eyes with a spoon and then force-feed them to him.

The Auteur and the narrator are no longer on speaking terms. He explains Binh’s torture scene to the extras without looking at the narrator who will translate to them. The Auteur says that they’ve just ambushed a patrol and Binh is the sole survivor. The extras are to see Binh as a “backstabber with yellow skin but a white soul.” They’re to make him confess his “reactionary sins.” He’ll then pay for them. He concludes by telling the extras to “have fun,” be themselves, and “just act natural.” The extras are confused by this because torture has nothing to do with “acting natural.” When the Auteur asks what’s wrong, the tall sergeant says that everything’s fine.

At this point in the script, Binh, nicknamed “Benny,” has been caught in a probe led by the A-Team’s only black soldier, Sergeant Pete Attucks, whose name comes from his ancestor, Crispus Attucks. The sergeant steps into a booby trap—a bear claw made of bamboo spikes—and loses his left foot. The Viet Cong captures him and Binh. They castrate Attucks and stuff his genitals into his mouth. According to Claude, this was something that some Native American tribes did to “trespassing white settlers.” Claude finds it ironic that the Viet Cong had a similar practice, regarding it as proof of shared humanity.

During his torture scene, James Yoon grimaces, grunts, cries, bawls real tears, yells, shrieks, wriggles, twists, thrashes, heaves, and climaxes when he vomits his breakfast of chorizo and eggs. At the end of the scene, the set is silent. Everyone is stunned by the performance. The Auteur towels him off and says, “That was amazing, Jimmy, absolutely amazing.” Then, he asks him to do it again, just to be sure.

In the end, the Auteur asks for six takes. At noon, he asks Yoon if he wants to break for lunch. The actor shudders and says that he’ll stay where he is. He wants to feel like he’s really being tortured. While everyone else goes to the shady canteen, the narrator sits by Yoon and offers to shelter him with a parasol, but Yoon refuses. He insists that people like Binh went through much worse; the narrator agrees. While training for the secret police, the narrator learned from Claude that brute force only gets an interrogator bad answers. Yoon asks for some water and the narrator gets it for him. The narrator is relieved to hear the Auteur’s voice, calling out for the completion of the scene “so Jimmy can get back to the pool.”

By the final take two hours later, Yoon is teary with pain and his face is bathed in actual sweat, mucus, vomit, and tears. The narrator looks at him and thinks of the communist agent. For the next scene, the Auteur requires several takes. It’s the last one in the movie for Yoon. Unable to get their victim to confess, the Viet Cong beat his brains out with a spade. Binh drowns under a faucet of two gallons of his own blood. For the brains, Harry has concocted “homemade cerebro-matter” made of oatmeal and agar, which he daubs on the earth around Yoon’s head. The cinematographer closes in to capture the look in Binh’s eyes, “some saintly mix of ecstatic pain and painful ecstasy.” The character never utters a word in response to his punishment, at least not “an intelligible one.”