Line #19 Literature/TheUglyAmerican


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tua_4.png]]
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3	''The Ugly American'' is a political novel written by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer in 1958.
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5	The book narrates the life of various fictitious political figures, diplomats, and civilians and their lives within the fictional Asian country of Sarkhan during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.
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7	It was adapted into a film starring Creator/MarlonBrando.
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9	!!Tropes:
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11	* {{Ambadassador}}: Louis Krupitzyn, the Soviet Ambassador to Sarkhan, makes great and concerted efforts to learn and blend into Sarkhanese culture, speak and understand its language fluently, and manages to endear himself and his regime to many locals, at least initially. A higher contrast could hardly exist between him and …
12	* AssInAmbassador: Lou Sears, US Ambassador to Sarkhan. He makes no effort to learn the Sarkhanese language, shuts off himself and his office from local society, insists on entertaining only the expatriate crowd, and prefers to live comfortably like an officer in a colonial regime. In all fairness to Sears, he wasn't qualified for the job; he was appointed ambassador because he wanted to be a Federal judge, but there was a two-year waiting period for there to be a vacancy so he was appointed ambassador to kill time until that vacancy opened.
13	* BadassPreacher: Anti-Communist Catholic Jesuit priest Father Finian, who slowly assembles a team of like-minded Burmese to destroy the Communist Party's reputation in a Burmese highland town. Might also qualify for EvilJesuit especially from the Communists' point of view.
14	* BananaRepublic: Sarkhan, and to varying degrees, the rest of the Southeast Asian countries surrounding it. The extremely pro-American Philippines deserves special mention as even it features in one chapter, with vaguely Latin-like dignitaries flaunting Hispanic honorifics and surnames to boot.
15	* BilingualBackfire: American diplomats hire natives of the fictional war-torn Southeast Asian country to work as servants in their embassy. A visiting Nationalist Chinese diplomat discovers and explains that at least some of the servants are Red Chinese spies pretending not to understand English; Sears' replacement, U.S. Ambassador Gilbert [=MacWhite=], finds this out the hard way.
16	* DirtyCommies: The whole reason for the American presence in Sarkhan in the first place. This is the Cold War after all.
17	* {{Eagleland}}: Perhaps the entire point of the book is to explore both flavors and how they each affect American perceptions in Southeast Asia. Unsurprisingly, most of the protagonists are flavor 1's, while the bumbling, ineffective diplomats are flavor 2's.
18	* DaEditor: The sharp-spoken mixed race Ruth Jyoti of the ''Setkya Daily Herald''. She holds no punches when pointing out the severe insensitivity, arrogance, and incompetence of many high-and-mighty American officials in Southeast Asia.
19	* DuringTheWar: Much of Southeast Asia is a hotly-contested battleground for the ongoing UsefulNotes/ColdWar. In one chapter set in Vietnam, the "First Indochina War"—i.e., the Vietnamese war for independence from their French colonisers—is ongoing, and the novel covers the fall of Dien Bien Phu.
20	* EvilColonialist: Sarkhan has a sovereign government, but in lieu of formal colonialists the Americans often come closest, acting like high-and-mighty colonial officials and refusing to understand local customs or mingle with local communities.
21	* FarEastAsianTerrorists: More precisely Southeast Asian terrorists in the form of the more violence-oriented strains of Communist cadres working in Sarkhan and elsewhere in the region.
22	* FigureItOutYourself: Atkins uses this as his rationale for co-developing the water pump with Jeepo instead of doing all the work himself. This pays off when Jeepo improves on Atkin's design so that the bike serving as its power source doesn't have to be dismantled first, as most Sarkhanese families only have one bike to spare.
23	--> '''Atkins:''' Whenever you give a man something for nothing[,] the first person he comes to dislike is you. If the pump is going to work at all, it has to be their pump, not mine.
24	* GoingNative:
25	** Generally, the Soviets are seen as better at adjusting to local cultures than the aloof, brash, and fairly xenophobic Americans; this goes some way to explaining why the Communists are having better success at attracting the populace of Sarkhan and neighbouring states.
26	** On the American side, the eponymous "Ugly American"—the humble engineer Homer Atkins, who actually spends his days in Sarkhan interacting with the locals and assisting them through small livelihood programs.
27	** Another American case in Col. Hillandale in the Philippines, who goes to Filipino parties and was dubbed "The Ragtime Kid" by the locals. (This isn't as much of an effort as it might seem, though, as the Filipinos have already been considerably Americanised prior to the setting of the novel—thanks to a half-century of American occupation.)
28	* HolidayInCambodia: Sarkhan is a fictional country in Southeast Asia, meant to represent the turbulent politics of the region post-World War II. Hillandale is an Edward Landsdale analogue[[note]]credited for 'stabilizing' the Philippines in the wake of the war, he was later sent to Vietnam to do something similar[[/note]].
29	* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: On a country-wide scale, Sarkhan itself; culturally it most closely resembles Burma or Thailand, but geopolitically it was intended to be a stand-in for Vietnam.
30	* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Colonel [[PunnyName Hillandale]] is almost transparently based on real-life CIA officer Col. Edward Lansdale, especially since Hillandale in the novel is explicitly described as the CIA man who engineered Magsaysay's defeat of the Huk rebellion and his election as President (the position which Lansdale served in RealLife).
31	* OneSteveLimit: Averted; two major ambassadors on opposite sides of the Cold War are both named Louis (Sears on the American side, Krupitzyn on the Soviet side). Whether or not this was intentional on the authors' part, this might serve to highlight them as {{Foil}}s by showing just how different their approaches are to diplomacy.
32	* RealPersonCameo: Then-Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay is given a few lines.
33	%%* RedScare
34	* LaResistance: The Communist rebels in Sarkhan (including Deong) and elsewhere across Southeast Asia.
35	* LanguageFluencyDenial: "Donald" and "Roger", two Chinese employees of the US Embassy in Sarkhan, feign illiteracy and not speaking English in order to be able to eavesdrop on the American employees and report what they hear to the Communists in China and Sarkhan.
36	* SmallParentHugeChild: It's mentioned that Major James "Tex" Wolchek's parents were "short, dark, and small-muscled" Lithuanian immigrants while their sons, having grown up in Texas, were much taller and more muscular than their parents thanks to a childhood in which they were better-fed.
37	* TamperingWithFoodAndDrink: Accused of American John Colvin, with milk. He tries setting up a facility to process and distribute powdered milk for the benefit of Sarkhanese locals, but because his former friend Deong has become a Communist, Deong forces him to add a powerful emetic into the milk, since it's Deong's belief that the Americans can't be entrusted with development projects in Sarkhan, thus appearing to be the locals' saviours. When John can't agree with this, Deong is forced to accuse him of adulterating the milk with aphrodisiacs to take advantage of local women (who savagely beat up Colvin's ass in short order). Worth noting that Deong learned about the use of the emetic ipecac from John during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, when they help sabotage the Japanese army's food with it.
38	* UglyAmericanStereotype: The American diplomats in Southeast Asia live comfortably, are unconcerned with local affairs and don't really integrate into society. By contrast, the Soviet diplomats are familiar with the culture and the locals. A Burmese journalist giving a speech lampshades it, saying Americans in the United States are generally fine, but once they go abroad they become isolated and pretentious. This echoes a previous statement in the book by the Philippine president at the time, Ramon Magsaysay. (However, the titular ugly American engineer is not an Ugly American; although he finds himself unattractive, he's hardworking, willing to get his hands dirty, and treats the locals as equals.)
39	* WarIsHell: In the Vietnam chapters, after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, a French Foreign Legion unit attempts to take on the Communists outside of Hanoi. The casualties portrayed on their side are horrific, with two Legionnaires (a black American and an anti-communist Vietnamese) respectively receiving graphic mutilations—the former's left eye gouged out, the latter's vocal cords severed.

Context Literature / TheUglyAmerican