A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain Literary Elements

Collection of short stories

The story ‘’Mr. Green’’ takes place in America and in Vietnam and it spans numerous years, presenting the narrator’s life story.

Every short story is told from a different perspective. The stories are narrated from a first person subjective point of view and more than often the narrators remain unnamed, transmitting the idea that anyone could narrate them. However, one important thing to note is that every narrator is Vietnamese.

The tone used in the story ‘’ Fairy Tale’’ is a neutral one.

In the story ‘’Fairy Tale’’, the protagonist is the prostitute and the antagonist is the soldier who convinced her to come with America with him and promised her to marry him.

The major conflict in the story ‘’Open Arms’’ is between democracy and communism.

The story ‘’Crickets’’ reaches its climax when Ted realizes his son will never be interested to learn about Vietnamese culture.

One foreshadowing element appears in the poem ‘’The Trip Back’’ when the narrator passes across a bridge over the Lost and Old Rivers. This foreshadows the disease affecting Mr. Chinh, a disease which stops him from remembering his past and his family.

When Ted tries to convince Bill in the story ‘’Crickets’’ that cricket fighting is something he will enjoy is an understatement because Bill becomes quickly bored.

One of the allusions we find in the story ‘’Fairy Tale’’ is the idea that those who work as bargirls sometimes suffer a lot because of their profession. The narrator mentions how a girl she knew began abusing drugs and how she disappeared one day, most likely because she was killed.

An important imagery in the story ‘’Crickets’’ is that of the dirty shoes Bill shows his father after they are finished hunting for crickets. For Bill, the dirty shoes were far more important than anything else and he was scared they will never get cleaned. This image shows that for Bill, the thing that was most important was not his father’s intention to teach him something about his old culture but rather his desire to fit in and be accepted.

One of the paradoxical ideas in ‘’Crickets’’ is how Ted is disappointed not because his son is not interested in the thing he was trying to teach him but because he did not found the right insects he wanted to show his son how cricket fights take place.

We find a parallelism in the story ‘’The Trip Back’’ between the way in which the narrator remembers the buzz of the alarm clock and the pain on his shop but he has troubles remembering the way his wife reacted when she was sad. In a similar way, the grandfather remembered the car he used to own but is unable to remember his own granddaughter which he took care off. This shows just how sometimes, we forget the things that are most important while remembering those that have no real value.

The crickets are used in the story ‘’Crickets’’ as a general way to make reference to the things Ted experienced in Vietnam, experiences he will not be able to pass on to his own child.

We find personification in the line ‘’ sitting in the muddy shadow of the house’’ in the story ‘’Crickets’’.