Genre
Historical fiction
Setting and Context
Set in Saigon in 1963
Narrator and Point of View
First-person narrative from Patricia’s perspective
Tone and Mood
The tone is apprehensive, and the mood is calm.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The central character is Charlene, and the antagonist is the Vietnamese War criminals.
Major Conflict
The conflict is between the American soldiers and warlords in Vietnam.
Climax
The climax comes when Patricia meets Rainey after sixty years of separation.
Foreshadowing
Patricia’s miscarriage foreshadows her childlessness.
Understatement
Saying Lily is responsible is an understatement because she is seamless, selfless, honest, kind, and compassionate.
Allusions
N/A
Imagery
Patricia’s description of her daily routine depicts a sense of sight. Patricia says, “Most days I would bathe in the morning and then stay in my housecoat until lunch, reading, writing letters home – those fragile, bale blue airmail letters with their complex folds, evidence, I think now, of how exotic distance itself once seemed.”
Paradox
The meeting between Patricia and Rainey is a big paradox because it happens after sixty years of separation. Patricia never expected to see Charlene's daughter again, but it happened after six good decades.
Parallelism
There is a parallelism between Patricia's reflections on her experiences and Rainey's assumptions about Saigon's life in the early 1960s.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
Tears are personified when the narrator says, "The tears that stood in your eyes, illuminating, or so it seemed, the blue of your irises, withdrew themselves—there was no other word for it. Not a one ever fell." In this context, tears are given the human ability to stand and withdraw themselves.
