The Sympathizer: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

With that one word, “nothing,” the narrator completes his re-education. Now, he’s preparing for his “watery departure” from his country. After the narrator answered the question, the Commissar reentered the room, turned off the light and sound, unbound him, and embraced him, cradling the narrator’s head until he stopped screaming. The Commissar comforted him and said, “Now you know what I know, don’t you?” The narrator knew—it was all a joke. He began to laugh so hard that the baby-faced guard and the Commandant came to investigate the noise. When the Commandant asks what’s so funny, the narrator says, “Nothing!”

The narrator goes back to his isolation cell. All he wants to do is sleep. The doctor pulls a sheaf of 307 pages out of his briefcase—the narrator’s confession. He pulls out another sheaf of papers and asks him to copy the confession. The narrator spends hours copying what he already wrote. Then, he asks for more paper so that he can add what happened after his confession in the examination room. The narrator thinks back to his former self—the man with two minds—and feels sorry for him. He had been foolish enough to think that he could represent a group of people in The Hamlet, when he couldn’t even represent himself. The doctor pats the pages of the manuscript and nods with satisfaction, telling the narrator that he’s nearly done.

The narrator hasn’t seen the Commissar since the end of the examination. They meet in his quarters for the last time. Man uneasily offers the narrator tea. He announces that both Bon and the narrator are leaving the camp and the country. A truck awaits them at the gates. They’re going to Saigon, where Bon has a cousin. Bon’s cousin has tried twice to flee the country. This third time, he’ll succeed because the Commissar has paid for his escape, along with that of the narrator and Bon. The narrator embraces Man and weeps. Though he’s setting the narrator free, Man will never be free, except in death.

So, what has the narrator learned, he asks? While nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, nothing is also more precious than independence and freedom. The two slogans are almost the same, but not quite. The second slogan is the joke. Besides a man with no face, only a man with two minds could understand this joke. As a result, the narrator begins to think of himself as “we” instead of “I.” Before the narrator leaves, Man gives the narrator back the rucksack that he took, along with the narrator’s copy of Asian Communism and the Oriental Mode of Destruction. Man also hands the narrator the copy of his confession. He then orders him to leave.

The narrator has no shortage of paper when he arrives in Saigon, where everyone is required to write confessions and submit them to local cadres. They are exercises in fiction, since they have to find things to confess. They end each confession by saying that nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. On the evening of their departure from Vietnam, the narrator pays for Bon’s fare and his own. They’ll travel by bus to a village three hours south, where a ferryman will wait by a riverbank. They’ll ask him the coded question: “Can you take us to our uncle’s funeral?” The ferryman will give the coded answer: “Your uncle was a great man.”

The narrator, Bon, and their navigator will then get onboard a skiff and glide across the river to a hamlet. Down the river, a fishing trawler that holds 150 people will await them. They may not survive the trip in the tight, suffocating space. The only cause that the narrator espouses now is wanting to live. He writes the final sentence of his confession—the one that will not be revised: We will live!