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Communism In William J. Burdick's The Ugly American

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During the Cold War, the thought of the world being controlled by Communism was something that shook the American People. In the book, The Ugly American, written by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick was a book that underlined this fear and also brought up problems that the American government faced in terms of their foreign policy. Using fictional characters and places to convey nonfictional scenarios, allows the book to coalesce information in both the world of literature and the world, to help readers interpret the problems and actions that the American government took during the era. Notably, the book starts off by introducing the center of the novel, an American Ambassador to a fictional country called Sarkhan, somewhere in …show more content…

How many people do you think we could round up in this country who speak Cambodian or Japanese or even German?... I don’t parlez vous very much myself… we don’t need to know the native language. Translators are a dime a dozen overseas” (Lederer and Burdick 81). This is one of the problems that are outlined in the story, and one of the problems that the American government faced when it came to its foreign policy. When put up against the Russians in the book the American government looked foolish in its choices. According to the local database, “By contrast with the Soviet diplomatic corps is dedicated, modest, self-sacrificing, well informed of local customs, linguistically fluent and focused on its goal” (The Ugly 1). Or in other words, the Soviets had chosen their Ambassadors by basing them on their credentials and not by their appearance and favorability, which the American government had done. A prime example of this was provided in the first chapter when they were introducing Ambassador Sears and the other Ambassadors from Russia. The other Ambassador had learned the language and didn’t need the translator that Mr. Sears needed. The relation between Mr. Sears and translators were complicated. In the text, it was pointed out that the people of Sarkhan did not favor the American Ambassador for many reasons. Unlike the Mr. Sears and his group of AMbassadors, the Soviets used their knowledge of the language and culture to their advantage. One of the ways that they did was telling the people of Sarkhan that the rice that they were receiving from the Americans was actually theirs. By doing this the even deepened the barrier that was there between the two cultures. A prime example of this action was displayed in the primitive chapters of the book when

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