Symbol for the destructive force of the Americans
When the narrator starts the first chapter, "Open Arms,’’ he mentions how the Australians and the Americans used to make up their camps. The Australians would simply set up tents under the tress and listen to the birds. The Americans transformed the entire environment, leveling the ground, putting up barbed wire and cutting down the tress. The Americans destroyed the natural environment and because of this the camps are used as a symbol for the destructive nature of the Americans.
Symbol for becoming independent
The most important symbol in the story "Mr. Green’’ is the killing of the parrot that takes place at the end of the story. The parrot is used in the story as a symbol for the oppression the female character felt her whole life. Thus, by killing the parrot, the narrator becomes independent for her first time and breaks away from the traditions that ruled her life until then.
Symbol for a pre-Communism Vietnam
In the story "The Trip Back’’, the narrator talks about the good life he and his family used to have in Vietnam before the communist party took control. The narrator came from a well-off family and lacked nothing. They spent most of their time in a resort village near the sea and there they would live in constant bliss. Everything happened when the Vietnam War started and their lives changed drastically. The beach is used here as a symbol, to suggest the life many had before the war, a life filled with happiness and bliss.
Symbol for wealth
In the story "Fairy Tale’’, the narrator talks about her boyfriend and the time when he addressed a group of important Vietnamese people, a meeting with the narrator attended as well. the narrator mentions how the boyfriend did not use Vietnamese when addressing his listeners, but rather English and the narrator argued that the boyfriend could do this because the people in the audience were "big’’ or from the upper class. The narrator was not from the upper-class and thus she did not spoke English. Thus, it is safe to assume that the narrator used the English language as a symbol for wealth and civilization while Vietnamese is used here to refer to poverty.
Black skin
One of the common motifs found in many of the stories is the connection between dark skin and poverty. The Vietnamese people with darker skin are looked down upon and called farmers and poor because they have to work in the fields. This association is extremely common and some of the characters in the stories confessed to trying to avoid the sun as much as possible as to not get darker skin and thus be associated with the farmers. For them, having a dark skin is something they wanted to avoid.
