The Sympathizer Themes

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer uses duality as an overarching theme to explore the narrator’s personal racial ambivalence, as well as the social ambivalence of the Vietnamese refugee community in the United States. The story follows the nameless narrator to California after the fall of Saigon in 1975 (which marked the end of the Vietnam War), where he and other refugees must rebuild their lives. However, the narrator is also a sleeper agent…

Aside from exploring the centuries-old divide between the East and the West, Nguyen more specifically addresses the racism that Vietnamese refugees endure in the United States, due to persistent stereotypes about Asian people. The author uses two key Western institutions—universities and movie studios—to explore how racism and misrepresentation are systemic. Nguyen observes how Americans, who lost the Vietnam War, still control the narrative of the war, refashioning themselves as heroes and the Vietnamese as hapless…

In The Sympathizer, the nameless narrator’s duplicity in his relationships fosters a sense of moral ambivalence. His commitments to both Communism and Western democracy, to both North and South Vietnam reinforce the notion that he belongs to everyone and no one. He is nameless, known only by his titles of “captain” and comrade, because his true identity exists in the space between these labels. On the other hand, his blood brother, Bon…