The Sympathizer

The General is making plans for the grand opening of his liquor store, setting the opening date for late April to coincide with the year anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Bon is hired as a part-time bouncer for the store. Meanwhile, the narrator begins a casual sex relationship with Ms. Mori, who is fiercely American (“I damn well know my culture, which is American”) and who “does not believe in marriage but [she does] believe in free love” (76).

The General invites the narrator for a private meeting along with Claude, who is back in America after narrowly escaping Vietnam as North Vietnamese forces finally overtook Saigon. Claude’s arrival in Los Angeles is perfect timing; the General says, “We have an informer. A spy” (86). The General relays to Claude the narrator’s intel, that the crapulent major is likely the spy. Since the narrator was the one to choose the crapulent major as an evacuee, the General asks the narrator, “Do you agree that you must correct your mistake? I thought you would” (87). In this instance, “correcting his mistake” means that, with the help of Bon, the narrator must assassinate the crapulent major—a man that the narrator, the true spy, knows to be innocent. When discussing plans for the crapulent major’s murder with Bon, Bon happily agrees to do the “dirty stuff” of executing the actual murder, so the narrator will be responsible only for logistics of the plan. The narrator feels guilty for knowingly plotting the murder of innocent man. “The only compensation for my sadness,” the narrator says, “was the expression on Bon’s face” (89). With a job of great importance to the General, Bon is happy to have a renewed purpose.

On the grand opening of the liquor store, the party is populated with many other Vietnamese refugees. The crapulent major is in attendance, and the narrator asks him—as a man of Chinese descent and great lover of food—to show him where the good Chinese food is in Los Angeles. The crapulent major, an affable man, “who love[s] food and friendship, someone without an enemy in this new world, except for the General,” enthusiastically agrees to accompany the narrator (92). Sonny Do, a former college classmate of the narrator, is also at the liquor store’s opening party, and he and the narrator chat, beginning to reconnect. Sonny is a man of “utter conviction” and the editor of a newspaper (93). They promise to catch up at a later date.

The next day, the narrator has breakfast with the crapulent major, where he goes on about his love of food and the fact that his wife just had twin boys, named Spinach and Kale. Later in the evening, the narrator attends a goodbye dinner party for Claude, who is leaving for Washington D.C., and continues to be overcome with guilt about plotting to murder the crapulent major. The narrator tries to convince himself that, on some level, the crapulent major must be guilty: “Innocence and guilt. These are cosmic issues. We’re all innocent on one level and guilty on another. Isn’t that what Original Sin is about?” (103).

The narrator continues to move forward with the murder plot, and begins trailing the crapulent major to learn his routines. He observes the crapulent major’s sad, nightly commute from the gas station where he works as an attendant to his home a few blocks away. On the night of the murder, Bon and the narrator wear UCLA sweatshirts and trail the crapulent major on his way home. Bon hides behind two cars until the crapulent major approaches the carport and has a brief exchange with the narrator, sitting in the front seat of his vehicle. Bon emerges and shoots him in the forehead, “a third eye, weeping blood” (109). When Bon and the narrator return to their shared apartment, they toast to the crapulent major, but the chapter concludes on a note of guilt, with the narrator thinking about that “third eye”—the bullet hole in the major’s forehead—“weeping because of what he could see about me” (110).