The Solidarity of the Classics

Abstract This chapter investigates how classicality becomes a medium for solidarity in the work of Viet Thanh Nguyen. It analyzes how The Sympathizer and its sequel The Committed rework the Homeric Odyssey through the intermediary of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the critical framework of Toni Morrison’s concept of “disremembering.” The chapter focuses on two sets of Homeric reimaginings that unsettle heroic and civilizational binaries. The first section reads The Sympathizer alongside the encounter with Polyphemus, showing how the narrator moves between the positions of Odysseus and the cyclops in order to destabilize distinctions between “us” and “them,” and between “civilization” and “barbarism.” The second section turns to The Committed to examine reworkings of the episodes involving Circe and the Lotus-Eaters, using these encounters to probe colonial assimilation, ideological seduction, and postcolonial identity formation. Across both novels, the chapter argues that Nguyen rejects the heroic logic of violent return, replacing it with an ethics of recognition and solidarity. By filtering classical narrative through refugee experience and a network of marginalized literary interlocutors, the chapter shows how classicality is transformed from a tool of differentiation into a medium for coalition-building and collective critique.