The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer self-identifies as a “man of two faces and two minds” (3), and it is this characterization that most defines him. A half-French, half-Vietnamese double agent posing at varying times as a communist sympathizer and an anti-communist patriot, The Sympathizer is also occasionally referred to as “the Crazy Bastard” by his associates in the Parisian criminal underground that he finds himself caught up in upon his arrival in France, a sobriquet that speaks to the psychological imbalance that defines his personality. The exhaustion of The Sympathizer’s in-between existence is established well through the often fragmented and discursive nature of his narration, and he is prone to fits of alternating crying and laughter that often come upon him at strange times, such as during casual conversations about romance (in the case of crying) or on the brink of his own death (in the case of his laughter...