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Dr. Richard Hedd
A twenty-two-year-old North Vietnamese sympathizer who tries to swallow a list with the names of important members of the South Vietnamese Army, including the narrator and the General. She is raped by three policemen in a movie theater that is sometimes used as an interrogation room while Claude, the crapulent major, and the narrator watch. She is then sent to prison. After three years in holding, her eyes have faded and her hair is thinning. The narrator promises himself that he will soon have her released.
The Communist Agent Quotes in The Sympathizer
The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by The Communist Agent or refer to The Communist Agent. 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:
).
Chapter 20
Quotes
We're revolutionaries, my friend. Suffering made us. Suffering for the people is what we chose because we sympathized so much with their suffering […] Only without the comfort of sleep will you fully understand the horrors of history. I tell you this as someone who has slept very little since what has happened to me. Believe me when I say that I know how you feel, and that this has to be done.
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Chapter 21
Quotes
They were good students, just like me. They learned their lesson well, and so have I, so if you would please just turn off the lights […] if you would remember that the two of us were once and perhaps still are the best of friends, if you could see that I have nothing left to confess […] if I had become an accountant, if I had fallen in love with the right woman […] if my father had gone to save souls in Algeria instead of here […] if we had not fought a war against each other, if some of us had not called ourselves nationalists or communists or capitalists or realists […] if history had never happened, neither as farce nor as tragedy, if the serpent of language had not bitten me, if I had never been born, if my mother was never cleft, if you needed no more revisions, and if I saw no more of these visions, please, could you please just let me sleep?
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The Communist Agent Quotes in The Sympathizer
The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by The Communist Agent or refer to The Communist Agent. 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:
).
Chapter 20
Quotes
We're revolutionaries, my friend. Suffering made us. Suffering for the people is what we chose because we sympathized so much with their suffering […] Only without the comfort of sleep will you fully understand the horrors of history. I tell you this as someone who has slept very little since what has happened to me. Believe me when I say that I know how you feel, and that this has to be done.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21
Quotes
They were good students, just like me. They learned their lesson well, and so have I, so if you would please just turn off the lights […] if you would remember that the two of us were once and perhaps still are the best of friends, if you could see that I have nothing left to confess […] if I had become an accountant, if I had fallen in love with the right woman […] if my father had gone to save souls in Algeria instead of here […] if we had not fought a war against each other, if some of us had not called ourselves nationalists or communists or capitalists or realists […] if history had never happened, neither as farce nor as tragedy, if the serpent of language had not bitten me, if I had never been born, if my mother was never cleft, if you needed no more revisions, and if I saw no more of these visions, please, could you please just let me sleep?
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
