Интерпретация британского романа. Understanding British Novels. A student’s activity book for advanced learners of English

А.А. Гольдман 
И.Ж. Винокурова

ИнтерпретАцИя 
брИтАнскоГо ромАнА

Москва 
Издательство «ФЛИНТА» 
2019

UNDERSTANDING
BRITISH NOVELS

Учебное пособие

3-е издание, стереотипное

Допущено УМО по классическому университетскому 
образованию для студентов высших учебных заведений 
в качестве учебного пособия 
по направлению подготовки 032700 — «Филология»

УДК 811.111(075.8) 
ББК 81.2Англ-923

Г63

Г63 

Гольдман А.А.
Интерпретация британского романа. Understanding British 
Novels. 
A student’s activity book for advanced learners of 
English  [Электронный ресурс] : учеб. пособие / А.А.  
Гольдман,  И.Ж. Винокурова. — 3-е изд., стер . — М. : 
ФЛИНТА, 2019. — 256 с.
ISBN 978-5-9765-1756-1

Пособие призвано активизировать самостоятельную работу в 
процессе подготовки к занятиям по домашнему чтению, 
интерпретации и анализу текста. Оно состоит из глав романа Гр. 
Грина «The Quiet American», каждая из которых сопровождается 
рядом заданий, способствующих углублению понимания прочитанного, 
развитию умений излагать содержание, интерпретировать смысл 
художественного текста.
Для студентов старших курсов, изучающих английский язык по 
направлению 032700 «Филология», профиль «Зарубежная филология» 
(английский язык и литература).

УДК 811.111(075.8)
ББК 81.2Англ-923

ISBN 978-5-9765-1756-1 
© Гольдман А.А., Винокурова И.Ж., 

2013

© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2014

CONTENTS

Предисловие / Preface  .....................................................................................4 
Introduction  .......................................................................................................5

PART O NE
Chapter I  ........................................................................................................11
Chapter II  ......................................................................................................24
Assignment I  ....................................................................................................34
Chapter III  .....................................................................................................37
Chapter IV  .....................................................................................................51
Assignment II  ..................................................................................................67
Chapter V  .......................................................................................................71

PART T W O
Chapter I .........................................................................................................79
Chapter II (1, 2)  .............................................................................................91
Assignment III  ...............................................................................................101
Chapter II (3)  ...............................................................................................107
Assignment IV  ...............................................................................................131
Chapter III  ...................................................................................................136
Assignment V  .................................................................................................157

PART T H RE E
Chapter I  ......................................................................................................162
Chapter II (1)  ...............................................................................................180
Assignment VI  ...............................................................................................184
Chapter II (2)  ...............................................................................................188

PART F O UR
Chapter I .......................................................................................................196
Chapter II  ....................................................................................................201
Chapter III  ...................................................................................................216
Assignment VII  ..............................................................................................219
Assignment VIII  .............................................................................................223
Assignment IX  ...............................................................................................231
Assignment X  .................................................................................................236
Assignment XI  ...............................................................................................246
Assignment XII  ..............................................................................................247

List of References  .........................................................................................254

преДИсЛоВИе

Учебное пособие рассчитано на студентов старших курсов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков. Оно предназначено для домашнего чтения и включает в себя задания на 
развитие навыков чтения, говорения, а также ряд упражнений, 
способствующих совершенствованию навыков интерпретации 
художественного текста.
Пособие построено на материале романа известного британского писателя Грэма Грина «The Quiet American». Выбор 
произведения объясняется не только тем, что это детективный 
психологический роман, который, безусловно, вызывает интерес читателя, но и тем, что оно содержит в себе вопросы, остающиеся актуальными независимо от времени — вопросы политики, мира и войны, любви и ненависти, дружбы и предательства, 
психологии преступления. Роман также в большей степени раскрывает порывы человечности и ставит под сомнение право человека судить других людей.
Каждый раздел пособия начинается с главы или подглавки 
романа, приводимой без сокращений и каких-либо изменений 
авторского стиля. Текст произведения сопровождается комментариями, поясняющими исторические и географические реалии. 
После чтения каждой главы романа студентам предлагается выполнить ряд заданий, направленных на обогащение словарного 
запаса обучающихся, развитие навыков понимания оригинального текста и совершенствование навыков говорения. Наиболее 
эффективным типом упражнений в этом пособии являются задания, которые рассчитаны помочь студентам обсудить основные 
проблемы произведения, интересные эпизоды, поступки и размышления персонажей, излюбленные стилистические приемы 
автора и т.п.

В конце пособия приводится ряд заданий, рекомендуемых 
для заключительного обсуждения книги.

PREFACE

The aim of the present manual is to give the students of philology 
the tool for understanding and interpretation of a literary text. It is 
based on the novel “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene. It 
provides an introduction about the author, the chapters of the book 
with commentaries on historical and geographical realia.
The manual contains a set of vocabulary exercises on some 
interesting expressions from the novel. Special focus is made also 
on the fragments of the text which can help a student to apply a 
linguostylistic approach to understanding of a literary text. Besides, 
every chapter of the novel is followed by discussion of the themes 
which Gr. Greene is exploring.
The manual is intended to help teachers, students and general 
readers to enjoy reading and understanding a contemporary classic 
novel by one of Britain’s finest writers.

INTRODUCTION

Graham Greene, in full Henry Graham Greene (born October 2, 
1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England—died April 3, 1991, 
Vevey, Switzerland) is an English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist whose novels treat life’s moral ambiguities in 
the context of contemporary political settings.
His father was the headmaster of Berkhamsted School, which 
Greene attended for some years. After running away from school, 
he was sent to London to a psychoanalyst in whose house he lived 
while under treatment. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, 
Greene converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926, partly through 
the influence of his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning, whom he 
married in 1927. He moved to London and worked for The Times 
as a copy editor from 1926 to 1930. His first published work was a 

book of verse, Babbling April (1925), and upon the modest success 
of his first novel, The Man Within (1929; adapted as the film The 
Smugglers, 1947), he quit The Times and worked as a film critic 
and literary editor for The Spectator until 1940. He then traveled 
widely for much of the next three decades as a freelance journalist, 
searching out locations for his novels in the process.
Greene’s first three novels are held to be of small account. He 
began to come into his own with a thriller, Stamboul Train (1932; 
also published as Orient Express), which plays off various characters 
against each other as they ride a train from the English Channel 
to Istanbul. This was the first of a string of novels that he termed 
“entertainments,” works similar to thrillers in their spare, tough 
language and their suspenseful, swiftly moving plots, but possessing 
greater moral complexity and depth. Stamboul Train was also the 
first of Greene’s many novels to be filmed (1934). It was followed 
by three more entertainments that were equally popular with the 
reading public: A Gun for Sale (1936; also published as This Gun for 
Hire; films 1942 and, as Short Cut to Hell, 1957), The Confidential 
Agent (1939; film 1945), and The Ministry of Fear (1943; adapted 
as the film Ministry of Fear, 1945). A fifth entertainment, The Third 
Man, which was published in novel form in 1949, was originally a 
screenplay for a classic film directed by Carol Reed.
One of Greene’s finest novels, Brighton Rock (1938; films 
1947 and 2010), shares some elements with his entertainments — 
the protagonist is a hunted criminal roaming the underworld of an 
English sea resort — but explores the contrasting moral attitudes 
of its main characters with a new degree of intensity and emotional 
involvement. In this book, Greene contrasts a cheerful and warmhearted humanist he obviously dislikes with a corrupt and violent 
teenage criminal whose tragic situation is intensified by a Roman 
Catholic upbringing. Greene’s finest novel, The Power and the 
Glory (1940; also published as The Labyrinthine Ways; adapted as 
the film The Fugitive, 1947), has a more directly Catholic theme: the 
desperate wanderings of a priest who is hunted down in rural Mexico 
at a time when the church is outlawed there. The weak and alcoholic 

priest tries to fulfill his priestly duties despite the constant threat of 
death at the hands of a revolutionary government.
Greene worked for the Foreign Office during World War II and 
was stationed for a while at Freetown, Sierra Leone, the scene of 
another of his best-known novels, The Heart of the Matter (1948; 
film 1953). This book traces the decline of a kindhearted British 
colonial officer whose pity for his wife and mistress eventually 
leads him to commit suicide. The End of the Affair (1951; films 
1955 and 1999) is narrated by an agnostic in love with a woman who 
forsakes him because of a religious conviction that brings her near to 
sainthood.
Greene’s next four novels were each set in a different Third 
World nation on the brink of political upheaval. The protagonist 
of A Burnt-Out Case (1961) is a Roman Catholic architect tired 
of adulation who meets a tragic end in the Belgian Congo shortly 
before that colony reaches independence. The Quiet American (1956; 
films 1958 and 2002) chronicles the doings of a well-intentioned 
American government agent in Vietnam in the midst of the antiFrench uprising there in the early 1950s. Our Man in Havana (1958; 
film 1959) is set in Cuba just before the communist revolution there, 
while The Comedians (1966; film 1967) is set in HaitI during the 
rule of François Duvalier. Greene’s last four novels, The Honorary 
Consul (1973; adapted as the film Beyond the Limit, 1983), The 
Human Factor (1978; film 1979), Monsignor Quixote (1982), and 
The Tenth Man (1985), represent a decline from the level of his best 
fiction.
The world Greene’s characters inhabit is a fallen one, and the 
tone of his works emphasizes the presence of evil as a palpable force. 
His novels display a consistent preoccupation with sin and moral 
failure acted out in seedy locales characterized by danger, violence, 
and physical decay. Greene’s chief concern is the moral and spiritual 
struggles within individuals, but the larger political and social 
settings of his novels give such conflicts an enhanced resonance. 
His early novels depict a shabby Depression-stricken Europe sliding 
toward fascism and war, while many of his subsequent novels are 

set in remote locales undergoing wars, revolutions, or other political 
upheavals.
Despite the downbeat tone of much of his subject matter, Greene 
was in fact one of the most widely read British novelists of the 20th 
century. His books’ unusual popularity is due partly to his production 
of thrillers featuring crime and intrigue but more importantly to 
his superb gifts as a storyteller, especially his masterful selection 
of detail and his use of realistic dialogue in a fast-paced narrative. 
Throughout his career, Greene was fascinated by film, and he often 
emulated cinematic techniques in his writing. No other British writer 
of this period was as aware as Greene of the power and influence of 
cinema.
Greene published several collections of short stories, among 
them Nineteen Stories (1947; revised as Twenty-one Stories, 1954). 
Among his plays are The Living Room (performed 1952) and The 
Potting Shed (1957). His Collected Essays appeared in 1969. A Sort 
of Life (1971) is a memoir to 1931, to which Ways of Escape (1980) 
is a sequel. A collection of his film criticism is available in Mornings 
in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader (1993). In 2007 
a selection of his letters was published as Graham Greene: A Life 
in Letters. The unfinished manuscript The Empty Chair, a murder 
mystery that Greene began writing in 1926, was discovered in 2008; 
serialization of it began the following year.

THE QUIET AMERICAN
by Graham Greene

Dear Rene and Phuong,

I have asked permission to dedicate this book to you not only 
in memory of the happy evenings I have spent with you in Saigon1 
over the last five years, but also because I have quite shamelessly 
borrowed the location of your flat to house one of my characters, 
and your name, Phuong, for the convenience of readers because it 
is simple, beautiful and easy to pronounce, which is not true of all 
your country-women’s names. You will both realise I have borrowed 
little else, certainly not the characters of anyone in Viet Nam. Pyle, 
Granger, Fowler, Vigot, Joe-these have had no originals in the life of 
Saigon or Hanoi2, and General The is dead: shot in the back, so they 
say. Even the historical events have been rearranged. For example, 
the big bomb near the Continental3 preceded and did not follow the 
bicycle bombs. I have no scruples about such small changes. This is 
a story and not a piece of history, and I hope that as a story about a 
few imaginary characters it will pass for both of you one hot Saigon 
evening.
Yours affectionately,
Graham Greene

1 A city and port on the south coast of Vietnam. It was the capital of the 
French colony established in Vietnam in the 19th century, becoming capital of 
South Vietnam in the partition of 1954.
2 The capital of Vietnam, situated on the Red River in the north of the country. 
It was the capital of French Indo-China from 1887 to 1946 and of North Vietnam 
before the reunification of North and South Vietnam.
3 The Continental Hotel situated in the main street of Saigon.

“I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action
Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,
Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;
We’re so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.”
A.H. Clough4

“This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.”
Byron

4 Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819—1861), English poet. 

P A R T  ON E

CHAPTER I

After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the 
Catinat5: he had said. “I’ll be with you at latest by ten,” and when 
midnight had struck I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and went down 
into the street. A lot of old women in black trousers squatted on the 
landing: it was February and I suppose too hot for them in bed. One 
trishaw driver pedalled slowly by towards the river-front and I could 
see lamps burning where they had disembarked the new American 
planes. There was no sign of Pyle anywhere in the long street.
Of course, I told myself, he might have been detained for some 
reason at the American Legation, but surely in that case he would 
have telephoned to the restaurant-he was very meticulous about 
small courtesies. I turned to go in-doors when I saw a girl waiting in 
the next doorway. I couldn’t see her face, only the white silk trousers 
and the long flowered robe, but I knew her for all that. She had so 
often waited for me to come home at just this place and hour.
“Phuong,” I said — which means Phoenix6, but nothing nowadays is fabulous and nothing rises from its ashes. I knew before she 
had time to tell me that she was waiting for Pyle too. “He isn’t here.”
“Je-sais. Je t’aI vu seul a la fenetre.”7

“You may as well wait upstairs,” I said. “He will be coming 
soon.”
“I can wait here.”
“Better not. The police might pick you up.”

5 Ru Catinat (fr.) — the main street of Saigon. 
6 in classical mythology a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in 
the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from 
the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.
7 Я знаю. Я видела тебя одного у окна (пер. с франц.)