The Sympathizer: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

The narrator, addressing the Commandant, describes himself as “a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” He begins his confession in April 1975, when the Vietnam War has ended. Though he is currently in a prison cell, at the time the narrator was living in a villa with the General and his wife, Madame. In March of 1975, the South Vietnamese Army’s northern front collapses, and the narrator and the General are in disbelief. Secretly, the narrator takes pictures of the reports of defeats and war crimes and sends them to Man, his “handler.” The news of troops shooting civilians in the back so that they can be first to escape on barges and boats makes the narrator feel sympathy for the poor victims, but it also pleases him to know that the South Vietnamese regime is collapsing.

The Americans have rejected the South Vietnamese’s request for more money to buy “the ammunition, gas, and spare parts for the weapons, planes, and tanks” that they had once given for free. Madame suggests that the General and the narrator ask their friend, Claude, for a plane to help them escape. Claude says that the best he can do is arrange for “a black flight,” a C-130 flying in secret. The plane can hold 92 paratroopers and their gear, but the General’s extended family alone comprises 58 people, and Madame would never forgive him if he did not rescue all of her relatives.

The General then asks Claude if his staff will be evacuated. Claude says that, officially, there will be no evacuations because the Americans aren’t “pulling out anytime soon.” The General, who seldom raises his voice, now furiously responds. He wonders why his staff can’t be evacuated when planes have been leaving all day and all night, and when babies and orphans have been evacuated. Claude explains how Saigon would erupt into riots if an evacuation were declared and that people might turn on the few Americans who remain. Many of those people  worked for Americans. Some of them believed that, if the Communists won, they would be forced into prison or death by strangulation. The virgins, they thought, would be forced to marry the Communist “barbarians.” The CIA propagated these rumors.

Claude reminds the General that he’s lucky to get a plane. Other generals are only getting seats for immediate family. They finish their whiskeys and Claude says goodbye. Later that day, the president of South Vietnam resigns. The narrator works on the list of evacuees, while the General attends meetings at the Joint General Staff compound to work out how to hold Saigon but also to prepare to abandon it. Striking names off of the list, the narrator feels like an executioner.

The narrator continues working on the list of evacuees, while those fighting in the Battle of Xuan Loc are defeated and Phnom Penh falls to the Khmer Rouge. A few nights later, the former South Vietnamese president flees for Taiwan with “a hefty share” of Vietnam’s gold. Claude calls the next morning to say that the plane he assigned to the General will be leaving in two days. That evening, the narrator finishes his list. A number of the senior officers with the most knowledge and know-how in the work of the Special Branch will be left behind. The narrator reserves one seat and three more on the plane for Bon, his wife, and his child, who is also the narrator’s godson.

Along with Man, Bon is one of the narrator’s “blood brothers.” In their school days, they swore undying loyalty to each other by slicing their palms open and mingling their blood in ritual handshakes. The narrator asks the General for the favor of taking Bon and his family with them. The General agrees, particularly because of Bon’s work as a paratrooper. The General believes that if the South Vietnamese Army were composed only of Airborne men like Bon, they would have won the war. The General goes on to commiserate with the narrator about how the Americans sold them the war with the promise of saving them from Communism. There is nowhere else for the General and the others to go but America.

On their last morning in Vietnam, the narrator drives the General to his office at the National Police compound. The narrator’s office is down the hall from the General’s. He summons five officers to meet with him, one by one. One of them is the "crapulent" major. As the narrator finishes his meetings, he hears distant booms, which rattle the windows. He sees fire and smoke coming from the east—enemy fire has set the Long Binh ammunition depot aflame. The narrator pulls a bottle of Jim Beam out of his desk drawer and drinks from it. He imagines his mother telling him not to drink so much. He finishes the whiskey, and then drives the General home through a storm.

After he finishes packing, the narrator borrows a car to get Bon. The military police wave him through the checkpoints when they see the General’s stars on the vehicle. The narrator is driving across the river, where the refugees’ shanties have been obliterated by “pyromaniacal soldiers and clean-cut arsonists who had found their true calling as bombardiers,” or corporals. Bon and Man wait at a beer garden. When the narrator arrives, Bon pours him a glass of beer as soon as he sits down. Bon lifts his glass to toast their future meeting in the Philippines, though they will actually be going to Guam.

When the narrator, Bon, and Man leave the beer garden, they stop to smoke a cigarette in an alley, where they encounter three drunken marines. Though it’s only 6:00 PM, the marines are inebriated, and their fatigues are stained with beer. One bumps into the narrator and mistakes him for a policeman before Man corrects him, saying that the narrator is a captain and that the lieutenant should remember to salute a superior. The third marine dismisses Man’s demand for respect, reminding him that the president and the generals have disappeared. There’s nowhere to go, they say, and they’re certain that they’ll soon die. When the first marine calls the narrator a bastard, the narrator draws his revolver and places it between the marine’s eyes. He tells him that he won’t shoot because the marine is drunk. Everyone stops when they hear an explosion in the distance. The marine lieutenants leave in a jeep and fire their weapons skyward in defiance, until their magazines are empty.