She meets a Vietnam War veteran named Mr. Fontenot who proposes to her with an apple, and gives her a good life. Kánh is also against the way in which Vietnamese people put a lot of value on maintaining a close relationship with their extended family, something Kánh considers as being pointless. Not affiliated with Harvard College. . Ho tells Dao, “You have never done the political thing,” correctly predicting that Dao will do nothing with his knowledge that his son-in-law and grandson are murderers. The politics of the Vietnamese refugees continue after they have arrived in America, as their new home country looks to deal with the newly Communist united Vietnam. The narrator is a young woman who tells her story to the reader and the idea transmitted is that women were not appreciated in the society in which she lived. As a child, she was saddened when her grandfather told her that she could not tend to the worship of her family members because she is a woman. Mr Green is a talking parrot that belonged to her great grandfather; after his death, she cares for the parrot, bringing him to the United States with her. "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" is the final story. In later editions, there are two additional stories, "Salem" and "Missing". Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain study guide. This represents the clash between old and new and even though Kánh claims he likes the American way, he still maintains some of the old traditions. Whether this political and psychic fragmentation can ever be brought together again is left ambiguous at the end. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. His daughter learns more from her father by discovering some letters that he had written to the United States government in which he angrily and poetically demands his daughter's release, and she longs for him to love her in the way that he expressed his love in those letters. His job is to kill American soldiers and take the items they carry with them and hand the items over to the government so that they can identify the American soldiers. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Titled after one of the stories, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, the collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Despite barriers of age and language, Thiệu tries to educate his son to be more Vietnamese. GradeSaver, 3 April 2019 Web. The narrator, a Vietnamese businessman named Kánh, thinks about the way he used to live in Vietnam and the new life he built for himself and his family in America. Kánh criticizes his behavior and the way in which he refuses to tell the truth and what is really happening. They realize that despite their different backgrounds they have several things in common, and arrange to go on a date. Thập later kills an Australian soldier and himself. Several variations of fulfilling "The American Dream" are depicted in the collection. The three subplots of historical narrative, fantasy encounter, and contemporary violence intertwine to make the thematic point that the causes and effects of the Vietnam War extend deep into the past, involve spiritual as well as political issues, and perhaps most significantly, persist today, not just in Vietnam but in the United States. Magdalena, Micola. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a 1992 collection of short stories by Robert Olen Butler. This story focuses on the conflict between ancient, honourable but constricting values and the modern assertion of femininity. ©2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In the pack of cigarettes is a photograph of the dead American soldier's wife. The narrator must come to terms with her grandfather's subtle misogyny and establish her own self-worth as a woman. The story is told from the perspective of Vinh's wife, who has had little access to her husband's experiences as a soldier. I'm going to assume that neither of these questions has to do with the novels they're linked to, and that they are actually questions on development and education. A Jewish lawyer named Cohen, who shares with Giàu a fear of snow, talks to her as he waits for his takeaway meal on Christmas Eve. They could not, however, recognize that the reference simultaneously invokes the setting of the first story in the collection, “Open Arms,” which is narrated by a resident of another Versailles, a modern community outside New Orleans with a large North Vietnamese population. In "A Ghost Story", a man tells a story, which he claims he knows to be true, about the spirit of a beautiful woman who saves men from disaster, then reappears to eat them. I know now what it is that he has forgotten.” However, this optimism is undercut by its exclusive focus on the afterlife rather than the real world of political murder: Does Dao’s final vision of unity and redemption constitute a higher level that subsumes history and violence or only a continuation of the passivity that leaves action in the hands of the violent? resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Most of them had emigrated to Louisiana as part of the Vietnamese diaspora after the war. Thiệu and his new bride had escaped from Vietnam by boat and ended up in the state of Louisiana, where the land was very much like the Mekong Delta. About A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain Summary, Read the Study Guide for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain…, Vietnamese through the Eyes of a Foreigner, Already Dead: The Need for Human Interaction in Butler’s “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed”, Bridging the Gap: Comparing "Letters from My Father" and "The Writer", View Wikipedia Entries for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain…. The narrator speculates that, as a former Communist, he considers pornography immoral, and that it simultaneously reminds him of his longing for his dead wife. His son is uninterested and Thiệu eventually gives up. Both are dialogues between parent and child and make reference to supernatural beings. Kánh considers that the new way of living, the American way, is more sustainable. "Salem" is a story of a Vietnamese soldier that works alone in the jungles of Vietnam and assassinates American soldiers that stumble on his path. will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback. I am admittedly not very familiar with this compilation of short stories. The main theme in the story ‘’The Trip Back’’ is the conflict between the old and new. Copyright © 1999 - 2020 GradeSaver LLC. When the Australian soldiers bring him to a screening of pornographic films, Thập seems overwhelmed and disgusted. Ho’s decision to follow the Western teachings of Karl Marx and Dao’s decision to follow the Eastern spiritual teachings of the Buddha represent a split within the national character that is simultaneously political and psychological, fragmenting both the nation and its individuals. “Open Arms” also analyzes a discussion between a Buddhist narrator and a communist leader, among other parallels. What can you infer about the differences between Catholics and Baptists and Methodists?methodists. This presents a struggle many immigrant parents had to deal with, being torn seeing their children rejecting their own origins and refusing to learn about the traditions dear to their parents. The narrator speculates that, as a former Communist, he considers pornography immoral, and that it simultaneously reminds him of his longing f… It involves a grandfather, slowly dying, and seeing the vision of Ho Chi Minh, with whom he worked and lived. Frank is a Vietnam veteran who is eager to talk about his experiences. The opening story is set during the Vietnam War. Each story in the collection is narrated by a different Vietnamese immigrant living in the US state of Louisiana. The stories "Mid-Autumn" and "In the Clearing" are similar, in that they deal heavily in Vietnamese mysticism. "Snow" is the story of a woman named Giàu who works as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. When the Australian soldiers bring him to a screening of pornographicfilms, Thập seems overwhelmed and disgusted. The story is about a Vietnamese prostitute nicknamed Miss Noi who was brought to the United States as the wife of an American GI. Would that be correct? Ted is conflicted because he wants his son to be accepted and be considered American while at the same time to remember the traditions of his home country and parents. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. However, Dao counters with the provocative question, “Are there politics where you are now, my friend?” The story’s final words might summarize this thematic aspect: “I wanted to understand everything . . Both the title piece and the final story of the collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), carry more thematic weight and complexity within that context than if read independently.
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