The Buffalo Symbol Analysis

Little Dog frequently employs the image of a herd of buffalo thundering over the edge of a cliff in On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, and the buffalo are symbolic of the opioid crisis that is sweeping American society both in Vuong’s novel and in the real world. While watching television, Little Dog and Lan watch a herd of buffalo follow each other directly over the edge of a cliff, falling to their death below. Lan can’t understand why the buffalo would willingly go over the edge to their death, but Little Dog tells her that they don’t know what they are doing. The buffalo are simply following their family, he says. Vuong draws a parallel between the buffalo and the thousands of Americans who die each year from drug addiction, in many cases after watching their friends and family members go out the same way.

“You don’t have to be like the buffaloes,” Little Dog says to no one in particular. “You can stop.” Little Dog implies drug addiction as a learned behavior picked up from previous generations and friends, and if others would simply learn from the actions of others rather than simply mimicking them, Little Dog argues that this vicious cycle can be broken. In another life, Little Dog hopes he and his mother, Rose, can be “the opposite of buffaloes” and instead “grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home.” Unlike the buffalo, monarch butterflies use the memories and learned experiences of their ancestors to survive. At the end of the novel, a heard of buffalo charge directly at Little Dog on their way to a cliff; however, just as the first buffalo reaches the edge, the entire herd explodes into monarch butterflies and soar off over Little Dog’s head. Through his own learned experiences and those of others, Little Dog stops himself from going over the metaphorical cliff, and he implies that others can, too, if they only acknowledge and learn from the experiences of those before them.