Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Trauma, and Abuse
Drugs and Addiction
Gender and Sexuality
Race and Racism
Language and Storytelling
Memory
Summary
Analysis
Little Dog’s writing switches back to prose. He is on a train from New York City to Hartford. As Little Dog watches the city lights fade away, he glances down at his phone. There are numerous messages on the screen, each of them about Trevor. “It’s about Trevor pick up,” one message says. “The wakes on Sunday,” another reads. Little Dog decides to send Trevor a text. “Trevor I’m sorry come back,” Little Dog types. He hits sends and shuts the phone off, afraid that Trevor will respond.
Obviously, Trevor is dead and his death is likely related to his drug use. The messages on Little Dog’s phone are his friends calling and texting to give him the bad news from home, which is becoming all too common in Little Dog’s neighborhood. Little Dog’s switch from poetry back to prose reflects the gravity and sadness of the situation.
Themes
Little Dog gets off the train in Hartford. It has been over five years since he first met Trevor on the tobacco farm. Little Dog didn’t bother to tell anyone he was coming to town. He was in his Italian American Literature class when he saw the Facebook post from Trevor’s father on Trevor’s page. “I’m broken in two,” the post said. Little Dog left in the middle of the lecture and got on the train. He thinks about Trevor, about how Trevor asked him to stay in Hartford when he went to say goodbye before leaving. But they knew Little Dog wouldn’t stay, and they knew he only came to say goodbye from a safe distance, “the way men are supposed to do.”
Little Dog’s comment that he went to say goodbye to Trevor in a “way men are supposed to do” implies that men are not supposed to show their feelings and emotions, and to do so is to not behave as a “real” man. Little Dog often refers to Trevor’s scar as a comma that is symbolic of Trevor’s continuation; however, Trevor’s father’s post that he is “broken in two” underscores that Trevor’s life is over, and that his comma has become a period.
Themes
“You’re gonna kill it in New York,” Trevor said to Little Dog. “Don’t be scared.” At that moment, Little Dog knew Trevor was high. He glanced at Trevor’s arms and saw the dark purple bruises in the bend of his arm, where he dug in his veins with needles. Little Dog didn’t know it, but that was the last time he saw Trevor. He would never again see or kiss the comma-shaped scar on the side of Trevor’s neck. “Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, Ma?” Little Dog asks. “A comma forced to be a period?”
Again, Trevor is displacing his own feelings and insecurities onto Little Dog. It is Trevor who is scared to be without Little Dog, not Little Dog who is scared to go to New York, but Trevor’s traditional notions of masculinity won’t let him admit he is scared. Trevor’s drug use has obviously turned into a full-blown heroin addiction, which again reflects the pervasiveness of drug abuse and addiction in America.
Themes
Little Dog gets off the train and immediately heads for Trevor’s house. Halfway there, Little Dog decides it probably isn’t a good idea to show up and disturb Trevor’s father’s mourning, so he turns, by “habit,” toward the park. When Little Dog arrives at his house, he slides his key into the lock and opens the door. It is nearly midnight, and the house is dark and quiet. The television is on but muted, and Little Dog is guided upstairs by the soft light.
Trevor turns by “habit” at the park because he lives in that direction, and his body is trained to turn in this direction automatically after walking home so many times from Trevor’s. This also speaks to the power of memory—Trevor’s body remembers the way home even if he doesn’t consciously think it.
Themes
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Little Dog opens the door to Rose’s room. There is a bed, but she sleeps on the floor, her arthritis too bad from years at the salon to sleep on the soft mattress. Little Dog lays down on the floor next to Rose, startling her awake. She is confused, and she starts feeling around in the dark in search of injuries. Finding none, Rose lays back down. In moments like this, Little Dog says, he envies words “for doing what we can never do—how they can tell all of themselves simply by standing still, simply by being.”
Again, Little Dog implies that there aren’t words to express his feelings, which again underscores the limitations of language. If Little Dog was a word, how he felt and who he was would be apparent just by looking at him, but he can only express himself through language, which, in moments of great pain such as this, isn’t enough.
Themes
“Dear Ma,” Little Dog writes. “Let me begin again.” Little Dog is writing to Rose because it is late, and he knows she is probably walking home from the nail salon. He isn’t with her right now because he is “at war.” What Little Dog means is that it is only February and the president is already trying to deport Little Dog’s friends. It is hard to explain, Little Dog says. Lately, he has been trying to believe in heaven, so they can be together after this “blows over” (the word “over” is crossed out and the word “up” is written next to it).
Little Dog’s need to keep restarting his letter again speaks to the importance of his message. Little Dog’s claim that he is “at war” implies that the discrimination he faces as an immigrant in the current political climate is just as traumatic as Rose’s experience in actual war. Little Dog’s replacement of the word “over” by “up” reflects how important one word can be. To “blow over” implies a resolution, but to “blow up” is to be completely destroyed. Clearly, Little Dog expects to be destroyed before racial discrimination is resolved in America.
Themes
Rose once asked Little Dog what it meant to be a writer. “So here goes,” Little Dog says. Four of his friends are dead from drug overdoses. “Five,” Little Dog corrects himself, “if you count Xavier who flipped his Nissan doing ninety on a bad batch of fentanyl.” Little Dog doesn’t even celebrate his birthday anymore. Trevor started taking OxyContin after he broke his ankle the year before Little Dog met him. The drug, which is basically heroin in a pill, was first produced in 1996. The “truest ruins,” Little Dogs says, “are not written down.” A girl Lan knew in Go Cong was “erased” just weeks before the war ended, and she is a “ruin no one can point to. A ruin without location, like a language.” Within a month of first taking the Oxy, Little Dog says, Trevor was already addicted.
As Little Dog attempts to tell, or rather show, Rose what it means to be a writer, the structure of his letter again reads like stream of consciousness, and his thoughts become random and seemingly disconnected, much like memory can be. Xavier and Little Dog’s four other friends who are dead because of drugs, either directly or indirectly, further underscores the ubiquity of drug use in America. Little Dog’s reference to the girl in Lan’s village who was killed during the war is explained in terms of language, which again reflects the importance of writing in the novel.
Themes
“The truth is,” Little Dog says to Rose, he is really looking for a reason to stay. Often, the reasons he finds are small, like how Rose say “bahgeddy” instead of “spaghetti.” When Little Dog lived in Hartford, he would walk the streets at night. Sometimes he could hear animals scurrying in the distance, but for the most part, he could only hear the sound of his own footsteps. One night, he heard a man talking. Little Dog heard the word “Allah,” and knew the man was speaking Arabic. “Salat al-fajr,” Little Dog writes, “a prayer before sunrise.” Alone at night on the streets of Hartford, Little Dog likes to think he was praying, even if he doesn’t know what he was praying for.
Little Dog is hoping his letter will connect him in some meaningful way to his mother. He loves her, even if their relationship is difficult, and that love is reflected in even the smallest, most insignificant things, like the way Rose mispronounces certain words. Little Dog’s late night prayers are evidence of his struggles with his identity, as both a person of color and a member of the queer community, and his attempts to belong in a society in which he doesn’t really fit.
Themes
OxyContin was first developed for late-stage cancer pain—the kind of excruciating pain that comes with chemotherapy and end of life. However, it was soon prescribed for all kinds of pain, from arthritis to headaches. Once, Little Dog and Trevor stopped under an overpass to get out of the rain on their way home from a needle exchange. Trevor wanted to go to community college and study physical therapy, but instead he died at 22 years old, alone in his room surrounded by Led Zeppelin posters. The cause of death was an overdose of heroin and fentanyl.
Little Dog implies that Trevor became addicted to heroin, at least in part because he was prescribed OxyContin for a broken bone, which was not an appropriate use of such strong medication. A needle exchange is a program in which addicts can safely exchange dirty needles for clean ones, therefore reducing the transmission of blood borne diseases, and it is evidence that Trevor is indeed an addict. Trevor was robbed of his dreams—to go to college and be a physical therapist—largely because of the inappropriate prescribing of OxyContin.
Themes
Little Dog remembers watching television with Lan one afternoon and seeing a program in which a herd of buffalo follow each other off a cliff, falling to their death. Lan is horrified and asks why they do such a thing, and Little Dog explains that the buffalo don’t know they are running to certain death. “They don’t mean to, Grandma,” Little Dog says. “They’re just following their family. That’s all. They don’t know it’s a cliff.” Lan says they should have stop signs. There were stops signs growing up in Hartford, Little Dog says, but they weren’t always there. A woman named Marsha used to go door-to-door with a petition for stop signs. Her sons played in the neighborhood, she said, and she wanted them to be safe. Marsha’s older son, Kevin, died of an overdose not long after, and her younger son, Kyle, died five years later the very same way.
The buffalo following their families over the sides of cliffs to certain death serves as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of drug addiction within families. Like the buffalo, Kyle metaphorically follows Kevin off the cliff. Kyle watches Kevin die from his drug abuse, but then Kyle does the very same thing. This analogy again reflects how common drug abuse is and suggests that it often runs in families. Furthermore, Marsha is unable to keep her children away from drugs, despite her efforts to keep them safe.
Themes
Little Dog asks Rose if she remembers back when “FAG4LIFE” was spray painted in red on their front door. Rose, of course, couldn’t read and didn’t know what the words meant, so Little Dog told her it said “Merry Christmas.” That, Little Dog told her, was why it was red. Apparently, addiction may be associated with bipolar disorder. “I got the wrong chemicals, Ma. Or rather, I don’t get enough of one or the other,” Little Dog says. He doesn’t want his feelings of sadness to be “othered” from him, just as he doesn’t want his happiness “othered” either. What if Little Dog’s feelings of happiness aren’t really a “bipolar episode,” but true happiness that he has earned and therefore has a right to enjoy?
The slur written on Little Dog’s front door again reflects the discrimination and hate he is subjected to as a queer person in America. Rose doesn’t understand because she doesn’t speak the language, but she also, presumably, doesn’t know that Little Dog is queer, which again reflects Barthes’s theory of structuralism. Here, Little Dog admits that he has bipolar disorder and also struggles with his mental health and with problems of addiction, which he suggests are related. Little Dog’s claim that he doesn’t want his emotions to be “othered” reflect the ways in which Little Dog is “othered” by society for both his race and his sexuality.
Themes
Little Dog considers sadness his “most brutal teacher.” Sadness is like a lesson, Little Dog claims, and it says: “You don’t have be like the buffaloes. You can stop.” Little Dog swallows his pills. He never did heroin with Trevor; he was always too scared to shoot up. “Looks like you dropped your tampon,” Trevor would say. OxyContin was first marketed as “abuse-resistant,” but, Little Dog says, that was a lie. By 2002, OxyContin prescriptions for non-cancer pain increased tenfold, and the drug’s sales reached over $3 billion.
Little Dog again implies that the opioid epidemic in America is directly related to pharmaceutical companies and their efforts to make money at any cost, but the sadness Little Dog feels over Trevor’s death is like a wake-up call before Little Dog himself goes over the cliff. One doesn’t have to shoot up to overdose; it can happen when drugs are ingested orally, too. Trevor’s comment that Little Dog “dropped his tampon” again reflects Trevor’s narrow idea of masculinity, as Trevor reads Little Dog’s fear of injecting drugs as feminine and not the behavior of a “real” man.
Themes
Little Dog wakes to a strange sound. His eyes adjust in the darkness, and he can see Trevor seizing on the basement floor. At the hospital, Little Dog is told Trevor will live—this is the second time. “Take a right, Ma,” Little Dog says, at the bait shop where Trevor once shot and skinned a raccoon. “You and I,” Little Dog says to Rose, “we were Americans until we opened our eyes.” In the cemetery past House Street, Little Dog says, the oldest grave is of one Mary-Anne Cowder, who lived and died in 1784. In Vietnamese, the same word is used for both remembering and missing someone. “I miss you more than I remember you,” Little Dog says.
Little Dog is still talking to his mother as if she is walking home from work, and he is sharing his memories of Trevor’s past overdoses and directing her based on places he has been with Trevor (“Take a right [at the bait shop], Ma”). Little Dog implies that he and Rose are only Americans in their dreams, which again speaks to America’s racist society. They will never be white like the Europeans who colonized America many years before. Little Dog again underscores the limitations of language, as the same word in Vietnamese represents two distinct feelings, only Little Dog doesn’t equally feel these emotions. Thus, the word is useless to Little Dog.
Themes
To be political, Little Dog has been taught, is to be “merely angry, and therefore artless.” Good writing, he is told moves beyond politics and brings people together through truth and honesty. This occurs through “craft,” Little Dog says, but they ask for creation without considering the person who created it. As if, Little Dog says, a chair was created without thinking of the human body. It is unfortunate, Little Dog says, “that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter.” Cocaine and oxycodone makes things calm and busy simultaneously. Once, after shooting up, Trevor asked Little Dog if he was “really” gay. “You think you’ll be really gay, like, forever? I mean,” Trevor said, “I think me…I’ll be good in a few years, you know?”
Little Dog’s writing is again random and scattered like memories. He implies that his writing is political, even though he has been taught that political writing is “artless.” Little Dog can’t describe his life without politics, as it is largely political ideologies that drive the racist and homophobic treatment Little Dog endures at every turn. To stand up and resist the status quo, Little Dog implies, will always be a political statement. In this way, Little Dog implies that art, especially art that reflects racial, cultural, and sexual identity will always be political. Little Dog’s memories again reflect attention to language, drug addiction, and Trevor’s limited view of masculinity. Trevor implies that his sexuality is just a phase, and therefore does not reflect negatively on his masculinity and status as a man.
Themes
Rose asked Little Dog to explain writing, and he knows he is giving her a “mess.” He wonders if this is what art truly is. He searched Trevor’s name online recently, and it told him that Trevor was alive and living 3.6 miles away. “[M]emory has not forgotten us,” Little Dog writes. This letter isn’t really a story, Little Dog says, it is more of a “shipwreck—the pieces floating, finally legible.”
Little Dog’s description of his letter as a “shipwreck” reflects the scattered and random structure of his stories and memories. Trevor’s existence on Google is another metaphor for power of memory. Trevor was exceedingly important to Little Dog, thus he can never be truly forgotten.
Themes
Little Dog asks Rose who, or what, they were before they were themselves. Maybe they will meet each other again, in another life, and they will know everything except for the pain they have caused each other. “Maybe we’ll be the opposite of buffaloes,” Little Dog says. “We’ll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home.” Little Dog tells Rose that he misses her and that he is sorry he doesn’t call more. He says he is sorry for always asking “How are you?” when what he really wants to know is “Are you happy?”
In Little Dog’s buffalo analogy, families are damaging and lead the other buffaloes to certain death; however, in his butterfly analogy, families are supportive and ensure survival through teaching and sharing memories. Little Dog hopes he and Rose will be monarchs and learn from their past trials and pain, rather than ignore what their stories have to teach them and run off of the metaphorical cliff to their deaths.
Themes
The room is quiet and still. Lan is on the floor on a mattress with Rose, Mai, and Little Dog by her side. Rose says Lan’s name again and she weakly opens her eyes. She has been lying here for two weeks now, the pain too much to move her. The bedsores she developed in the meantime have become infected, and the smell of rotting flesh lingers with the smell of the bedpan, which sits under Lan and is constantly overflowing. The doctor diagnosed her with stage four bone cancer. Most of Lan’s femur had already been eaten away by then, and the doctor said she had two, maybe three, weeks to live. Take her home and make her comfortable, he said.
This memory is important to Little Dog, not only because it recounts the death of his grandmother, but because it recounts the death of Lan’s stories as well. Lan represents stories in Little Dog’s life, and she therefore represents Little Dog’s connection to his Vietnamese culture and heritage, since this part of his identity comes largely from stories. A large part of Little Dog dies with Lan, which is why this memory is included in his letter.
Themes
Little Dog thinks of Marcel Duchamp’s famous “sculpture.” By taking a urinal—a well-known object—Duchamp placed it upside down and called it new. Little Dog hates Duchamp for this, but only because he knows Duchamp was right, because that is exactly was has happened to Lan. In this new state, Lan is unrecognizable—she is someone else entirely. Little Dog has always found such transformations beautiful, when something or someone becomes something or someone else through “evolution.” Now, however, that beauty is lost on Little Dog.
Little Dog’s mention of Duchamp’s “sculpture” also harkens to Barthes’s theories of language and semiotics. By changing the orientation of the symbol, the symbol, or sign, becomes something else, which changes its meaning as well. This implies that language and meaning is unstable and constantly in flux, which Little Dog did find beautiful, until Lan evolved into something so unbearably sad.
Themes
Little Dog thinks of Trevor, who has been dead now for seven months. He thinks about their time in the tobacco barn, the summer air thick and hot. Trevor pushes Little Dog back onto the dirt floor of the barn and kisses him. Trevor climbs on top of Trevor and says they should “just do it.” Little Dog nods without speaking, and Trevor promises to be gentle. He slides his penis between Little Dog’s legs and is just about to enter him and stops. He asks if Little Dog is okay, but Little Dog isn’t sure. “Don’t cry on me again,” Trevor says. “Don’t you cry on me now.”
When Trevor says they should “just do it,” he means they should have penetrative sex rather than the modified “fake fucking” they usually do. Trevor’s insistence that Little Dog doesn’t cry “again” implies that Little Dog has cried before. Since Trevor has a very narrow view of masculinity, he considers crying a sign of weakness and beneath the behavior of a “real” man.
Themes
As Trevor enters Little Dog, pain explodes throughout Little Dog’s body. Trevor begins to move and the gold cross he always wears on a chain around his neck keeps hitting Little Dog in the face. Little Dog takes the cross in his mouth to keep it steady, and it tastes like Trevor. With each of Trevor’s movements, torrents of pain rip through Little Dog. What Little Dog doesn’t know, though, is that anal sex actually feels good if you make it past the pain. After about 10 minutes, Little Dog feels his bowels let loose and puts his head down in shame. Surprised, Trevor jumps up, and Little Dog couldn’t feel more naked if he had been standing there without clothes.
The gold cross hitting Little Dog repeatedly in the face is a subtle reminder of religion and the fact that broader society largely considers Little Dog’s sexuality some sort of “sin” that he should atone for. Discrimination and hate against the queer community is so deeply sowed in American society that Little Dog is unable to escape it, even in his own thoughts.
Themes
Trevor stands above Little Dog. Trevor, Little Dog thinks, who was “raised in the fabric and muscle of American masculinity” has been “tainted” with Little Dog’s “faggotry,” and the “filthiness of [their] act” has been “exposed” by Little Dog’s inability to hold his bowels. “Lick it up,” Little Dog thinks he hears Trevor say. “I said get up,” Trevor says again. He leads Little Dog outside to the river. “Clean yourself,” he says gently.
Again, Little Dog has internalized society’s hate for the queer community, and he is convinced Trevor—who is the epitome of masculinity—has been tainted by his sexuality. Little Dog is used to be abused and bullied because of his sexuality, so he is sure Trevor is ordering him to “lick it up” instead of kindly telling him to go to the river to clean up.
Themes
In the water, Trevor tells Little Dog not to worry about what happened, and Little Dog nods, humiliated and still in pain. Trevor grabs Little Dog by the chin and asks if he hears him, and Little Dog nods again, moving in the direction of the shore. Trevor grabs Little Dog and stops him. He drops to his knees in the water and grabs Little Dog’s thighs, taking Little Dog into his mouth. When he is done, Trevor stands and wipes his mouth. “Good as always,” he says, climbing out of the water.
Little Dog is obviously mortified over losing his bowels in the barn, and it takes incredible courage for him to share his story (which he is likely only able to do because he is certain his mother won’t read it). Trevor obviously cares for Little Dog, and he doesn’t want him to feel bad, so he proves Little Dog is still attractive and desirable by engaging him in a second sex act.
Themes
It is 10:00 in the morning when Lan begins to die. Mai points to Lan’s feet, which have turned a deep purple color. The feet go first, Mai says. Little Dog remembers back to years earlier, when Lan lifted him up over the chain-link fence that surrounded the highway to pick the purple flowers that bloomed near the shoulder of the road. As Little Dog picked the flowers, traffic whipped by him, and Lan was in the background yelling at him to hurry up and be careful. Beauty, Little Dog says, is what we risk ourselves for.
Lan’s purple feet harken to Little Dog’s earlier description of in-between feelings as “purple.” In this way, Lan’s purple feet reflect her current state of in between life and death. The story of the purple flowers and the risks one takes for beauty harkens to the beauty of Little Dog’s relationship with his loved ones, like Lan and Trevor. There is always the risk of heartache, but the beauty is worth it.
Themes
Lan has been dead for five months, but today, Rose and Little Dog are in Vietnam so that they can bury Lan’s ashes in the Go Cong District. After the ceremony with the monks and the saffron, Little Dog stands in front of Lan’s polished tombstone and calls Paul in Virginia. Paul asks to see Lan’s grave, so Little Dog takes his laptop, and, with Paul on Skype, holds the computer up facing Lan’s grave. There is a picture of Lan on her grave from when she was in her 20s, about the age she was when she met Paul.
Lan’s return to Vietnam in death represents a coming home. Lan’s Vietnamese identity was a major part of who she was, and her burial in Vietnam reflects this. Rose and Little Dog observe traditional customs in Lan’s burial, which again speaks to her cultural and identity. Paul is clearly still in love with Lan after all these years, and this again underscores the power of memory.
Themes
Little Dog thinks that he has lost Wi-Fi, then he hears Paul blow his nose and begin to talk. Paul is sorry that he left Lan in ’71, he says. He was told his mother was sick, but it was just a trick to get him home. She faked tuberculosis, and once he got back to the States, Nixon started bringing the troops home. Paul’s brother intercepted Lan’s letters. By the time the Salvation Army called and said there was woman in a refugee camp in the Philippines who claimed to be his wife, it was 1990 and Paul had been married to another woman for nearly ten years. Little Dog looks at Paul’s face and realizes he doesn’t know anyone—not Paul, Lan, or Rose—and he knows even less about Vietnam.
The truth behind Paul’s story and reason for leaving Lan in Vietnam again suggests he has been in love with her all these years. It is revealed here that he has another wife, but he still keeps his and Lan’s wedding picture framed on his living room wall. The behavior of Paul’s brother and mother also reflect the racism present in American society. Paul’s family didn’t want him married to a Vietnamese woman, so they tricked him into coming home, knowing it would be impossible for him to return to Vietnam.
Themes
Growing up in Hartford, locals greeted each other with “What’s good”—not “Hello” or “How are you?” Little Dog says, but “What’s good.” It is Hartford’s very own “lexicon,” and it reflects the people living there. Many of Hartford’s population are poor and working class people, and they know all about hunger and addiction. To ask another “What’s good?” Little Dog says, is to immediately skip all the pain and move to the good in life.
Hartford’s special greeting again reflects Barthes’s theories of structuralism. The meaning of “What’s good” cannot be understood without a grasp of the cultural context in which it exists. “What’s good” has a unique meaning in Hartford, and this meaning does not translate to anywhere else.
Themes
Little Dog can remember the table and the fire (because Lan told him there was a fire in their Hartford apartment), and he can remember the Kentucky Fried Chicken coupons the Salvation Army gave to his father. Little Dog can remember Rose saying to him each morning as he left for school: “Remember, don’t draw attention to yourself. You’re already Vietnamese.” Little Dog can remember visiting Paul after his college graduation, and he can remember his father. Little Dog puts his father “back together” in his mind, and he remember happiness, but mostly he just remembers the table.
Little Dog repeatedly mentions a table he remembers from his childhood, and that table is intimately linked with his memories of his father, of which Little Dog has very few. Little Dog claims he remembers his father and has put him “back together” in his memories, but Little Dog doesn’t actually remember anything about him, except for some coupons and a bloody $20 bill. Little Dog remembers the fire because Lan told him there was a fire, not because he actually remembers it firsthand, and the same goes for his father—Little Dog remembers his father simply because he was told he had one. Rose’s reminder that Little Dog is Vietnamese again reflects America’s racist society. As Little Dog isn’t the default race (white), Rose encourages him to be invisible, so he doesn’t draw negative attention to himself.
Themes
Little Dog remembers a butterfly landing on a blade of grass, its wings bent much like the cover of his dog-eared copy of Toni Morrison’s Sula. It isn’t a monarch, Little Dog says, but he knows there are monarchs nearby, getting ready to fly south. In Saigon, just two days after Lan’s burial, Little Dog wakes in the night to the sound of music and children laughing. It is 2:00 in the morning, so he goes outside to investigate.
Again, Little Dog’s memories seem completely random and unrelated. His reference to Toni Morrison’s Sula further reflects the importance of writing and storytelling in Little Dog’s life and in the novel, and the monarch again harkens to family and shared memories and lived experiences, such as those Lan shared with Little Dog.
Themes
Outside, there are people everywhere. There are colorful banners and clothing, and vendors have set up along the street to sell food and desserts. A man hands out roasted chicken to children, and lights line the crowded streets. Near the end of the street, Little Dog can see a stage, and the sounds of Vietnamese pop music fills the street. After a moment, Little Dog realizes that the people on the stage are singers dressed in drag.
The people on the stage are men extravagantly dressed as women, and they are singing and dancing and entertaining the crowd. This scene seems quite surreal, and it isn’t immediately clear if this is an actual memory or if it is some sort of story Little Dog is telling his mother.
Themes
Little Dog will learn later that this celebration is a common one in Vietnam. When someone dies in the middle of the night, all of the neighborhood chips in to hire a group of drag performers in what is called “delaying sadness.” The drag queens’ colorful outfits and lively performances keep the spirit of the recently deceased from getting trapped in limbo. Despite this tradition, however, being queer is still a “sin” in Vietnam. As long as the dead is lying in the open, the drag queens are “an othered performance.” They are “unreal,” like unicorns—“unicorns stomping in a graveyard.”
Vietnamese culture is only accepting of queer bodies in very limited circumstances, and even then the queer community is still “othered” and exploited for their differences. In the eyes of Vietnamese society, the queer community doesn’t exist, much like a unicorn. In the case of “delaying sadness,” the legendary “unicorn” (a queer body) can only be seen in the presence of death (the “graveyard”).
Themes
Little Dog can remember the table and fire burning at its edges. He can remember his first Thanksgiving—turkey, mash potatoes, and Lan’s eggrolls. Little Dog can remember is first year in American schools, when he took a field trip to a farm, and his teacher said upon returning to color a cow he saw there. Thinking that color meant happiness, Little Dog made a multicolored cow and was scolded by the teacher. “I said color what you saw,” the teacher yelled.
Little Dog sees the world differently than others, as evidenced by his multicolored cow, and he has been scolded and punished for these differences for most of his life. Lan’s eggrolls present during Thanksgiving further reflect the unique cultural hybridity in America because of the Vietnam War.
Themes
Little Dog thinks of Paul and why he volunteered to go to Vietnam when so many others ran north to Canada. Paul wanted to play the trumpet and be “a white Miles Davis,” but his father ripped up the music school application. After that, Paul wanted to get as far away as possible, so he went to Southeast Asia. People always say that things happen for a reason, but Little Dog doesn’t know why there are more dead than living, and he doesn’t know why monarchs flying south suddenly drop to the ground, too heavy to continue, “deleting themselves from the story.”
According to Canadian records, some 30,000 Americans dodged the draft and ran to Canada during Vietnam. According to British records, over 60,000 eligible soldiers fled the United States in total during Vietnam to avoid fighting in the war. Little Dog says earlier that monarchs pass messages and memories, and here he suggests that such memories can overwhelm the butterfly and drop it to the ground, essentially killing it (“deleting” it “from the story”).
Themes
Little Dog can remember Rose grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. “Remember. Remember,” she said, “You’re already Vietnamese.” He can remember walking down the sidewalk with her, and scores of beautifully colored birds flying around them. “Yes, there was a war,” Little Dog says, and they came from the center of it. Little Dog has always thought they were born from the war, but now he understands that they were born from beauty. “Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence,” Little Dog says, “but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
Little Dog’s words here underscore the beauty that can come from the violence and ugliness of war. Not everything that came from the war is bad. The unique people and hybrid culture that came directly from the Vietnam War—Rose and Little Dog, Lan’s eggrolls on Thanksgiving and Tiger Woods—are beautiful, Little Dog, and by extension Vuong implies, and they are worth recognizing and replicating in art.
Themes
Little Dog remembers a room and a table. He remembers Lan singing and fire crawling up the walls. He remembers a family hiding beneath the table. All Little Dog has is the table. Rose said there was a table, in Saigon, before Little Dog was born. Little Dog’s father came home drunk and beat Rose for the first time at the table. Little Dog remembers the table anyway. It is real, and it isn’t. He remembers Rose brushing the ash and soot from her pants and helping him to his feet, and together they “set the table.”
Little Dog’s memory of the table is symbolic of his memory for his father. Little Dog doesn’t really remember the table—he has never even seen the table—he only remembers it because his mother and Lan said there was a table. This is much like Little Dog’s father. Little Dog doesn’t really remember him, either. This underscores the effect of suggestion on memory and implies that not all memories are created equal.
Themes
Little Dog can hear the sound of an animal crying in his dreams. He opens his eyes and is in the tobacco barn. It is August, and Trevor sleeps next to him. Little Dog stands up in his boxer shorts and goes outside, toward the sound of the animal. He walks through the tobacco fields, and, finding nothing, he thinks about the night before. Little Dog asked Trevor if he ever saw those buffalo on the Discovery Channel, the ones that just run off the cliffs. Trevor said yes. “Idiots,” he added. But it isn’t the buffaloes’ fault, Trevor pointed out. “It’s Mother Nature,” he said. She orders them to run off the cliff and they do. Like a “law,” Little Dog said. “Yeah, something like that,” Trevor said. “Like a family. A fucked up family.”
Little Dog again hears the sound of an animal, which harkens to the discrimination Little Dog faces on account of his race and sexuality. As a queer person of color, Little Dog is “othered,” much like the Vietnamese drag queens, and he is viewed like an animal by society. Trevor’s explanation of the buffaloes running over the cliff again harkens to drug use and addiction within families and communities. They each mimic each other’s behavior in the form of drug use and jump off the metaphorical cliff to their deaths when they overdose.
Themes
Walking through the tobacco fields, Little Dog thinks of beauty. He thinks about how people only hunt what they think is beautiful. If life is truly short in the span of time, then one can be “gorgeous only briefly,” Little Dog says. “To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.” He hears the animal sound again and walks deeper into the field. Suddenly, Little Dog can see Rose standing before him.
This passage is where Vuong gets the title for his book. Little Dog is beautiful for the exact same reasons he is “hunted”—his race and his sexuality. It is Little Dog’s differences that make him uniquely beautiful. To be gorgeous implies visibility, which is a risk for people within marginalized community.
Themes
“Ma?” Little Dog asks. “Tell me the story again.” He wants to hear the story about the monkey. “You were born in the Year of the Monkey,” Little Dog says. “So you’re a monkey.” Mist rises in the field, and Rose is gone. Little Dog doesn’t know if Rose has made it this far into the letter or not. She always said it was too late for her to learn to read. He thinks about reincarnation. Rose believes in reincarnation, but Little Dog isn’t sure if it is real. He hopes it is, so he can see Rose again in another life. “Maybe then, in that life and in this future,” Little Dog says, “you’ll find this book and you’ll know happened to us. And you remember me. Maybe.”
Rose was born in the Year of the Monkey, which symbolically links her to the macaque monkeys and their ability to survive through memories and lived experiences. Little Dog hopes he and his mother can survive in the same way. This passage also reflects the power of memory. Little Dog suggests that some memories can’t be forgotten, even after death and reincarnation.
Themes
Little Dog begins running. He doesn’t know why, but he keeps running through the field. He is trying to outrun it all, to be a buffalo, somewhere in North Dakota maybe. He is a buffalo in a massive herd, and just as the first buffalo runs off the cliff, the buffaloes explode into monarchs and fly over Little Dog’s head. Thousands of butterflies soar overhead, and Little Dog looks up to see Rose. He asks Rose why she wasn’t trampled by the buffaloes. She’s too fast, she says, and they laugh.
When the buffaloes burst into monarchs and explode into flight over Little Dog’s head, it is symbolic of survival that is passed on from generation to generation through memories and lived experiences. In other words, the monarchs live because of stories and lessons learned, just as Little Dog does, and he will pass this knowledge on to the next generation.
Themes
