Monkey Bridge and the Vietnam War - Essay Example

? Monkey Bridge and the Vietnam War of of school/college Month, year Monkey Bridge and the Vietnam War The narration in Lan Cao’s novel Monkey Bridge unfolds through two narrative voices. These are that of Mai, a young Vietnamese refugee who immigrated America on the day Saigon fell in 1975, and her mother, Thanh. The context of the Vietnam War is central to Cao’s novel. The novel employs, at a structural level, many of the ideas of guerrilla warfare. Just as the Vietnamese oscillated between the roles of soldiers, farmers and parents during the war, the novel investigates the quotidian, social and historic contexts of the protagonists’ lives. There are numerous themes which the novel explores. Language and its numerous ramifications play an important role in the novel. While at one level, Mai discovers the “astonishing new power” (Cao, 37) of language through her proficiency in English, language is also shown to be deeply imbued with social and cultural power politics. The sense of inadequacy that Thanh feels for speaking English with an accent, even though she speaks Vietnamese and French perfectly well, may be seen in this context. The characters in Monkey Bridge are portrayed largely through inter-subjective perspectives. It is interesting to note how Thanh “dies” in Mai’s mind owing to her inability to adjust to the American society. It is significant to note the way in which the narrative modifies the conventional idea of filial reconciliation and gives it the feel of a detective story. Mai’s attempt at understanding her mother’s past is aimed at an understanding of her identity and traditional belonging. Paradoxically, while the other characters are etched out through the narratives of Mai and Thanh, the protagonists come into their own after having reconciled themselves to their anguished pasts vis-a-vis the other characters. The novel also deals with the notion of shared memories or shared history. Besides living in constant fear that her painful experiences in Vietnam shall rematerialize in her American present, Mai also shares her mother's grief for the presumed abandonment of her grandfather. This brings about a symbolic and structural fusing together of the characters of Mai and Thanh. Thus, Mai hopes to bring back fullness to herself and to her family by finding out the truth about the day her mother left Vietnam without Baba Quan. The conclusion of the novel assumes a confessional character as Thanh commits suicide, leaving a note that finally reveals all about her troubled past. Interestingly, this letter also shows all of Mai's previous notions about her grandfather, gathered from her mother's diary, to have been completely fallacious. As it dawns on Mai that her mother’s diary was not "my own and my mother's history", but rather, replete with "gorgeous fictional reimaginings" (Cao, 255), the novel seems to question the very idea of truth in fiction and in life. Her grandfather, who she idealizes for long, turns out to have been not a respectable man but an abusive, alcoholic parent. Thus, her mother's hallucinating callings were not out of a yearning to be reunited with him, but in fear of him. Furthermore, he was not left to the mercy of enemy forces, he was himself a Vietcong. The character of Mai and her mother Thanh are two of the most believable ones on the novel, Monkey Bridge. These two characters show a gap between themselves that can be understood only through an understanding of the gap that usually exists between people of two generations. The gap between these two characters is widened by the fact that they believed and had grown up in different cultures and environments. Both these characters are however, similar in the fact that they are not a part of the mainstream in their societies. This is what brings them closer by the end of the novel and this gives these two characters something that could enable them to bond with each other. The oppression that is meted out to an immigrant from another country is what Mai faces when she is in the United States of America; however, the oppression that Thanh and her mother face are forms of oppression that are operative in their own country. Cao is able to portray this generation gap between these two characters in a very believable way. This believable depiction of the theme enables the characters to also become believable to the readers of the novel Monkey Bridge. It also enables an understanding of the problems that people of both the United States of America and Vietnam had to face as a result of the war. The novel refrains from placing the blame of the war on either party but at the same time, makes an appeal for an understanding of the lasting psychological impact of the war upon the people of either country. There are also other conflicts in the novel that Cao talks about. The conflicts that a character like Baba Quan would have had to face are not spoken at length of in the novel but are said by being left unspoken. The shame and anger that leads Baba Quan into acts that were not very respectable, is a result of the conflict between the loyalty to his landlord and greed, and his own patriarchal notions of social respectability. These notions are shared by the people of Vietnam. This can be seen in the efforts that are taken by Mai’s mother and her uncle in ensuring that the ideas that she receives of her ‘father’ are those that enable her to have a positive image regarding him. She finally understands the falsity of her history and thus is made aware of the falsity of any account, historical or personal. Such accounts are created by people with vested interests and can be manipulated to serve certain ends of dominant sections of the society, according to the author. Baba Quan’s anger at the landlord can be seen, thus, as the result of the lack of choices that were open to the people of Vietnam when they were in their own country. They however, reminisce about their homeland when they gather together and hope that they would be able to go back to their homeland. The changes in the characters in the novel are not ones that happen over a period of time but are those that are revealed over a period of time. The characters themselves seem to remain static while the representations of them in the minds of the other characters change. Thus, many facets of the characters come out in the open as a result of the churning in the Vietnamese society that in turn, is a result of the Vietnam War. Other characters like Thanh are motivated by a patriarchal impulse to not besmirch the name of her husband. She does so at the cost of not revealing to her own daughter the name of her father. The impulse that motivates Mai, on the other hand is the need to understand her own history. This is analogous to the author’s own attempts at tracing the history of the war that happened in Vietnam, and the effects that it had on people like Mai, who were left as people belonging, in a certain sense, to both Vietnam and America, and in an another sense, to neither. The novel, Monkey Bridge seeks to interrogate conventional histories of the Vietnam War. It also seeks to understand the moral dilemmas of the Vietnamese. Debunking myths of a happy Vietnam, she exposes the fallacies that are held by both Americans and the Vietnamese to produce a balanced piece of fiction. Works Cited Cao, Lan. Monkey Bridge. New York: Penguin, 1998. Read More