An editor His son is uninterested and Thiệu eventually gives up. In later editions, there are two additional stories, "Salem" and "Missing". The story is told from the perspective of Vinh's wife, who has had little access to her husband's experiences as a soldier. She divorces her husband and becomes a prostitute again, and seems happy with her station in life. This story is about gendered values. But they are finally able to translate different facets of their culture to his comprehension and are able to infuse him with a Vietnamese identity, This story narrates the isolation of a generation that is caught in a cultural limbo due to their immigrant status. The narrator, a translator for the Australian forces, recounts the story of a North Vietnamese communist named Thập who joins the Australian forces as a spy, after the communists massacre his family. He suspects, however, that the mystery is connected with a recent murder. After the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, more than three million refugees fled the … Whether this political and psychic fragmentation can ever be brought together again is left ambiguous at the end. Dao finally comes to realize that his son-in-law and grandson were directly involved in the recent political murder. © 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1985 interview with Robert Olen Butler (RealAudio), Photos of the first edition of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Good_Scent_from_a_Strange_Mountain&oldid=934931069, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction-winning works, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 9 January 2020, at 11:00. He moved his way up in society by improving his businesses. Many of the stories were first published in journals. "The American Couple" is the longest story in the collection at 80 pages. 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. At the level of technique, this intertwining of the three strands is reinforced with multiple patterns of imagery. The A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you. Because of this, he begins to think he is missing, identity, in Vietnam. Open arms is one of the most intense stories in the collection. In the pack of cigarettes is a photograph of the dead American soldier's wife. What can you infer about the differences between Catholics and Baptists and Methodists?methodists. These stories deeply focus on the inherent cultural distinctions between USA and Vietnam and tell the tales of marginalized voices of a culture that is very distinct from America and contrast that culture with that of America, delineating the difficulties of Vietnamese in settling in America. A woman readying her friend's corpse for burial combs and envies the beautiful hair she combed and envied when they were girls in Saigon. The Trip Back narrates the story of Kanh, who goes to pick up his wife’s grandfather but discovers that his cousin has already accompanied him. The death of Mr Green is therefore symbolic. It is an outsider's perspective of Vietnam veterans, which is why Frank and Vinh are observed at a distance. I found mention on Catholocism on page 60, but it had no mention of either other denomination of Christianity. When the Australian soldiers bring him to a screening of pornographic films, Thập seems overwhelmed and disgusted. The title story in Butler’s 1992 collection begins with Dao, a very old Vietnamese man who now lives in New Orleans with his family, recounting his most recent dream in which he is visited by the ghost of former Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, whom he had known in London in 1917 and in Paris in 1918. Ho Chi Minh’s decision to follow the Western materialist teachings of Karl Marx and Dao’s decision to follow the Eastern spiritual teachings of Buddha represent a split within the national character that is simultaneously political and psychological, fragmenting both the nation and its individuals. "Letters from my Father" is the story of a Vietnamese teenager who has grown up without her American father. The story is about a Vietnamese prostitute nicknamed Miss Noi who was brought to the United States as the wife of an American GI. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain study guide contains a biography of author Robert Olen Butler, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Kánh is deeply disturbed by this and worries whether he could ever forget his wife, whom he deeply loves. You can help us out by revising, improving and updating Thieu and his wife had ended up in Louisiana after escaping from Vietnam soon realizing that it was a struggle for them to adapt to a completely different culture. JL JLo Chi Minh came to me again last night, his hands covered with confectioners'. The title of both the story and the book, the image of “a good scent from a strange mountain,” illustrates Butler’s method. 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. It is narrated by a Vietnamese woman named Gabrielle on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Not affiliated with Harvard College. Dao was a dishwasher at the London hotel where Ho was a pastry cook. Dao, a very old Vietnamese man who lives in New Orleans with his family, begins by recounting his most recent dream, in which he is visited by the ghost of former Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, whom he had known in Europe as a young man. It involves a grandfather, slowly dying, and seeing the vision of Ho Chi Minh, with whom he worked and lived. The collection was re-released in 2001 with two additional stories, "Salem" and "Missing". The book A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain written by Robert Olen Butler, a famous modern American fiction writer, consists of several short stories which are narrated by the Vietnamese who live in the United States of America. As a spy in Vietnam, he was able to direct U.S. missiles onto the homes of men who aroused his jealousy by looking at or flirting with his wife. "Crickets" is about a man named Ted (Thiệu) who tries to teach his Americanized son how to make crickets fight, which was a favorite game of Thiệu's as a boy in Vietnam. After the father arranges for his wife and daughter to come to the United States, he is unsure of how to react to his daughter, because all that he knows of her is from pictures and letters. Nguyen Bich Le, publisher of a Vietnamese newspaper in New Orleans, was shot the week before because he wrote an article arguing that it was time for Vietnamese expatriates to accept the reality of the communist government in Vietnam and to begin to work with the people who control their home country. "The Trip Back" is about Kánh, who drives to the airport in order to pick up his wife's grandfather, Mr. Chinh. In Dao’s three dream conversations with Ho, they recall their past and debate the divergent paths they chose: Dao became a Buddhist and Ho led a political revolution and then a war. The Vietnamese leader, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), lived in London from 1915 to 1917 and in France from 1917 to 1923. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993. Butler excelled in high school, serving as president of the student body and graduating as co-valedictorian. Dao’s story interlaces the past and his dreams with the present, a plot structure realistically motivated by the aging narrator’s inability to separate reality and fantasy, past and present. Singh, arushi, Chris Hodkinson. They struggled to adapt to the new land and language, while their American-born son, Bill, adapted easily but had little knowledge of his Vietnamese cultural background. Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot, Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle. Dao’s three dreamed conversations with Ho Chi Minh alternate with his narration of scenes in which he becomes convinced that his extended family is keeping a secret from him. A nameless representative of a Vietnamese anticommunist group telephoned the paper to claim credit for the murder. This was something of a surprise to me, the first time I saw him beside my. "Mid-Autumn" is about a mother's first love lost; "In the Clearing" is an apology from father to son for having to leave his family in Vietnam.