The Figurative Language and Narrative Structures of The Book of Salt - Research Paper Example

THE BOOK OF SALT: DOMINATION AND INEQUALITIES Outline: I. The Book of Salt as an Ethnic and Racial depiction of a Vietnamese experience A. Presented and imagined patterns of ethnic and racial relations B. Critiques of these patterns C. Presence of figurative language and narrative structure in these patterns II. How The patterns in The Book of Salt relate to the question of national identity Introduction This paper aims to explore the figurative language and narrative structures of The Book of Salt. Particularly, it shall attempt to see the different patterns of ethnic / race relations presented, imagined, and critiqued in the novel and how they relate to the question of national identity. Such shall be related to how the novel uses figurative language and narrative structure. The race relations discovered in the novel pertain to that of the western people and the eastern ones in which the latter are regarded inferior by the former. Such inferior regard is so strong that the Vietnamese have the same regard of themselves. Truong presents this through the use of figurative language such as understatement, hyperbole, and metonymy. Monique Truong tackles a story of a Vietnamese cook who was displaced forcedly in Paris in a 1934 setting. She uses the famous literary lesbian couple Alice Toklas and Gertrude Stein as a background for depicting this tale. Two narrative threads are flowing in the novel. In the first, chef Binh relates his present life at 27 rue de Fleurus along with the details of how he got himself in the household. In the second, Binh recounts his life in Vietnam and the reasons that made him leave the country and step on Parisian soil. The novel tries to establish a link between Binh’s past and that of his present. It depicts tones about Binh’s difference on social status and skin color from that of the rest of French society. Truong makes Binh accept his forced servitude in order to suggest some elements of racial exploitation. This acceptance may already be present even when he was living a miserable life in Vietnam when he was abused by his father. Through the figure of Binh, Truong explores the important issues of faith, hope, abuse, love, and exile prevalent throughout the novel. However, not only is the novel a story of misery and exile, but also of social anguish. This may be seen in the patterns of ethnic and race relations found in some of its parts. The Book of Salt depicts race, language, nationality, and colonialism whose interrelatedness suggests linkage necessary to understand social enigma. The ethnic and racial discrimination experienced by a Vietnamese cook in the person of Binh is supported by the use of language for the readers to see how they work in a nutshell. The book contains themes of ethnic, national, and racial inequalities, as well foreign colonization hidden in the usage of the words. Truong used Binh’s background and relates it to the present to show how ethnic inequalities persist, as well as French imperialism through socioeconomic difficulties experienced by him. By focusing on the complexity of power relations embodied in these socioeconomic difficulties, one would see the existence of these inequalities. The Book of Salt tells the story of Binh who needs to decide whether to travel with his employers Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas to the United States, remain in France, or return to Vietnam. There are certain parts of the novel suggestive of racial dominance and inequality. Language appears to be the reflections of this dominance, in which the language of the dominant group is regarded as superior than the dominated culture, where the very people of the dominated group themselves succumb to this fact. This domination found in the novel through language is seen in the statement below: “Minh the Sous Chef, as the Old Man had renamed him, had told us how the French never tired of debating why the Indochinese of a certain class are never able to master the difficulties, the subtleties, the winged eloquence, of the French language” (13). Ethnic inequality is indicated in the above statement, embodying the ‘highness’ of the French language which the Indochinese of a certain class – the Vietnamese like Binh himself – would never fit to its standard and quality, which are directed solely to the French. The statement may not necessarily warrant a factual truth, but only a perception – in that the Vietnamese are never able to master the difficulties, the subtleties, and the winged eloquence of the French language because they are Vietnamese. Truong uses metonymy in these lines, such as the word “French” to indicate the whole of what is being described. The ethnic and racial relations between a culture perceived inferior and another one perceived superior are seen in the social status between Binh and his employers, and how he is treated in the household as a cook. The sexual orientation of Binh and that of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas is also of different stances, in that the two women can openly pursue their lesbian relationship without too much worry while Binh struggles in his own homosexuality. The presented and imagined patterns of racial inequality are pursued by the French’s wonderment of the Indochinese’s ability to know the French city more than they do, which signifies more than mere wonderment but more so, a Eurocentric stance that allows the French to regard their country and culture centered to them and them alone, and frowns at outsiders’ ability to do the same and more. This is exemplified by this line in the novel: “How can this little Indochinese, who can’t even speak proper French, who can’t even say more than a simple sentence, who cant even understand enough to get angry over the jokes that we’re making at his expense, how can this Indochinese know this city better than we?” (15). Further, even the colonized themselves in a pattern of global colonialism tend to accept their fate as natural and something which must be tolerated. Truong exemplifies this tolerance in a number of ways, particularly in the usage of language in her novel. The line below exemplifies this assertion: “Though contrary to what my Old Man would have me believe, the vocabulary of servitude is not built upon my knowledge of foreign words but rather on my ability to swallow them” (13). This suggests internalization of the condition of being dominated, in which dominance can only be possible if and when Binh himself or the dominated people whom he represents would willingly accept and swallow the condition of domination. Truong uses hyperbole to express this with her usage of the word “swallow.” Thus, it may be inferred that Binh’s servitude to his French employers as chef is signified by French imperialism and that his persistent willingness to obey his employers is synonymous to a neo-colonized nation adhering to the rules of the imperialist one. The inculcation of servitude in Binh’s mind is one which he does not notice at all anymore in his everyday dealing with things. It may be a result of his socialized existence in such order, which allows men to internalize what seems to be bizarre and politically questionable. This may be seen in how he observes Basket who is washed and dressed by the lesbian couple and unconsciously traveled his thoughts in his own ability to clothe himself. He said to himself: “I could wash and dress myself, thank you. Though like Basket, I too had a number of admirers” (4). This statement clearly shows that Binh is leveling himself on the level of a dog – a level much lower than his French employers of course, depicting power relations. In such level, one is only to obey and listen – and endure – and that one is Binh, or the dominated class of people whom he represents. Truong uses understatement as a figurative language to explain this, which underemphasizes the extent to which the statement may be true. Even in his own homeland, Binh was not able to find his own identity nor expressed his own individuality with norms opposed to what his sexual preference as a homosexual connotes. This ethnic inequality had already persisted in Vietnam, perhaps giving away the thought that going back to his homeland is an undesirable thing that he wants to undertake. This ethnic inequality is seen in that he was not allowed by society to openly pursue a relationship with another man, and doing such is a disgrace. Homosexuals are considered an ethnic group with diverse social orientations, whose rights and freedom must be secured. However, Binh did not experience this in Vietnam. The form of ethnic inequality in the French society is different from what Binh had experienced at home. In France, it is something related to his skin color and his nationality in general, making him ‘different’ from all of the French people, and inferior at that. However, the lack of sexual freedom that he experienced in Vietnam is one experienced openly by his lesbian employers. Even at home, Binh experienced domination by his Old Man, his father whose wrists and wits are easily lost when the handle is thrown, so to speak. The stink of this domination is implicit in the shallow bowl in the family altar which his mother takes hold of when he accidentally cut himself as a child. “Her eyes search for the contents of a shallow bowl perched on the family altar that the Old Man allows her, a bowl that gathers dead flies and clumps of dust held together by kitchen grease” (73). It may be posited that the bowl contains the stinks of his father’s dominance, a dominance that he detests until he is a grown man, but which he encounters in the Parisian soil – though of a different form. His father employs a controlling action on him and his family through violent temper. His mother is subservient to this dominance as well as him and his siblings when they were children. The ultimate expression of this dominance is viewed in Binh’s punishment for transgressing both gender and racial boundaries through his affair with Bleriot, and the wrath of his father reveals the intersection of race- and gender-based forms of oppression. This oppression orders him to follow the dominant rules pursued by the dominant group (the heterosexuals). National identity is also touched by the novel in that the desire to find his identity and equality with the rest of humanity is exemplified in Binh’s relationship with Bao, with whom no boundaries –colonial and social – limits his expressive emotions. “Yours is languid French, a vestige of your Southern America and its rich cadences, and English so different sounding from my Mesdames.’ My French is clipped and jagged, an awkward careless collection, a blind man’s home, a drunk man’s stumbled steps” (111). Even then, Binh begrudges himself in the apparent difference of his identity from the people of the West hailed in superior regard. In the midst of French colonialism, Binh seeks an identity for himself – a kind that aims to be accepted and respected for his gender and race and extends not only to him but also to the larger group which he belongs. The lack of it is what he experiences in the metropolis (Paris) as a colony (Vietnam). Binh subtly gains power for himself despite the prevailing social hierarchies that subject him. This is done by forging friendships with other fellow Vietnamese such Bao and the man on the bridge, which suggests the healing power of anti-colonial national identity. Binh copes with much of his pain by forming emotional bonds with various strangers, but especially with fellow Vietnamese, showing that there are alternative identities (especially national identity) that can help counter the oppressive power of colonialism and racism. Monique Truong is able to depict the elements of ethnic/racial inequality, colonialism, and national identity in The Book of Salt and accomplished this through the use of figurative language and narrative structures. This is done through a Vietnamese's struggle within himself to flee from the exploitations of his past only to enter into a new form of domination in another land. His homosexual orientation adds up to the confusion of his socio-economic condition, not totally detached from his past, but is in fact a link to his present. The books signifies power relations in which Binh is the dominated party both in his homeland and at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. Work Cited Truong, Monique T. D. The Book of Salt. First Mariner Books, 2004. Read More