Paul Character Analysis

Lan’s ex-husband, Mai’s father, and Little Dog’s grandfather. Paul is a white American from Virginia who plays the trumpet and aspires to be a “white Miles Davis.” When his father rips up his music school application, Paul joins the military to get as far away as possible. He is stationed in Vietnam in 1967, where he meets Lan at a bar in Saigon. Lan is a prostitute and already has Rose, but she immediately falls in love with Paul. They marry a year later and have two more children, but then Paul’s mother fakes a fatal illness and tricks him into coming home for a visit. After Paul arrives in Virginia, American troops begin to pull out of Vietnam, and after the Fall of Saigon and the end of the war in 1975, he is unable to get back to Lan. In the following years, Paul’s brother intercepts all of Lan’s letters, and by the time someone from the Salvation Army tells Paul that there is a woman in a refugee camp in the Philippines claiming to be his wife, it is already 1990, and Paul has been married to his second wife for nearly 10 years. Growing up in the United States, Little Dog sees Paul as his grandfather, even though Paul isn’t Rose’s real father. Throughout Little Dog’s childhood, Lan and Paul’s wedding picture hangs on Paul’s living room wall in Virginia, and when Lan dies at the end of the novel, Paul is heartbroken. Via a video call, Paul says goodbye to Lan’s grave in Vietnam from his home in Virginia, and he apologizes for not waiting long enough for her. Paul illustrates the power of memory in the novel, as he never forgets his love for Lan; however, he also represents the American presence in Vietnam during the war, and the unique cultural hybridity that was created because of this connection.