The Sympathizer

by

Viet Thanh Nguyen

The officer in charge of the North Vietnamese camp where the narrator and Bon are prisoners. He has “the high cheekbones and delicate features of an opera singer” and a morose character that the narrator attributes to homesickness. Otherwise, the narrator describes him as “eminently reasonable,” though the Commandant is a rather fanatical Communist who is eager to execute dissenters. He fought a war for ten years from a cave in Laos. While the narrator makes his confession, the Commandant strikes out what he doesn’t like using a blue pencil because, as he tells the narrator, Stalin also used a blue pencil. The Commandant fears the ideas to which the narrator was exposed in the West. To “correct” him, he forces the narrator to undergo a process of re-education, which involves various forms of torture.

The Commandant Quotes in The Sympathizer

The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by The Commandant or refer to The Commandant. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Duality Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

The month in question was April, the cruelest month. It was the month in which a war that had run on for a very long time would lose its limbs, as is the way of wars. It was a month that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world and nothing to most people in the rest of the world. It was a month that was both an end of a war and the beginning of…well, “peace” is not the right word is it, my dear Commandant?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Your destiny is being a bastard, while your talent, as you say, is seeing from two sides. You would be better off if you only saw things from one side. The only cure for being a bastard is to take a side.

Related Characters: The Commandant (speaker), The Narrator
Related Symbols: The Pickled Baby
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

How could I forget that every truth meant at least two things, that slogans were empty suits draped on the corpse of an idea? The suits depended on how one wore them, and this suit was now worn out. I was mad but not insane, although I was not going to disabuse the commandant. He saw only one meaning in nothing—the negative, the absence, as in there's nothing there. The positive meaning eluded him, the paradoxical fact that nothing is, indeed, something. Our commandant was a man who didn't get the joke, and people who do not get the joke are dangerous people indeed. They are the ones who say nothing with great piousness, who ask everyone else to die for nothing, who revere nothing. Such a man could not tolerate someone who laughed at nothing.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 371
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Sympathizer LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Sympathizer PDF

The Commandant Quotes in The Sympathizer

The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by The Commandant or refer to The Commandant. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Duality Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

The month in question was April, the cruelest month. It was the month in which a war that had run on for a very long time would lose its limbs, as is the way of wars. It was a month that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world and nothing to most people in the rest of the world. It was a month that was both an end of a war and the beginning of…well, “peace” is not the right word is it, my dear Commandant?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Your destiny is being a bastard, while your talent, as you say, is seeing from two sides. You would be better off if you only saw things from one side. The only cure for being a bastard is to take a side.

Related Characters: The Commandant (speaker), The Narrator
Related Symbols: The Pickled Baby
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

How could I forget that every truth meant at least two things, that slogans were empty suits draped on the corpse of an idea? The suits depended on how one wore them, and this suit was now worn out. I was mad but not insane, although I was not going to disabuse the commandant. He saw only one meaning in nothing—the negative, the absence, as in there's nothing there. The positive meaning eluded him, the paradoxical fact that nothing is, indeed, something. Our commandant was a man who didn't get the joke, and people who do not get the joke are dangerous people indeed. They are the ones who say nothing with great piousness, who ask everyone else to die for nothing, who revere nothing. Such a man could not tolerate someone who laughed at nothing.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Commandant
Page Number: 371
Explanation and Analysis: