The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Related to the sea, boats (and boat-like imagery) appear on numerous occasions in the book, from the fishing boats in Vietnam to the children sitting atop a tube like they’re riding on a raft. From the Girl and Ba’s escape on a boat out of Vietnam, we see how boats can function as vessels to guide the family out of the darkness of the water and the effects of the war. Boats provide a sense of safety; it is only once the Girl’s brother slips between the boats that he drowns. Ma compares Ba’s toes to boats that will lead them to a different life. Boats are able to cross seas and bridge the gaps that oceans create between Vietnam and America. But the boats are not available to everyone, as seen when Ba abandons Ma by accident among a chorus of voices that are trying to escape onto the boats as well. And not all boats are created equal, as seen when the U.S. naval officers laugh from their big ship down at the smaller boat of the refugees. Boats are powerful symbols of salvation with many layers in the novel.

The Cadillac is one of the ultimate status symbols of American wealth in the mid-late 20th century. Ba gets a Cadillac from his friend who works at car dealership as a present to welcome Ma to America. But Ma crashes the car into the gate outside their building, prompting Ba to return it. The crash of the Cadillac symbolizes the crushing of the American dream for the family and highlights how difficult it is lower-income refugees to become upwardly mobile and find their place in mainstream white America.

One day, the Girl’s father stumbles upon an image of a woman in a foreign country on television. She wears a blue kerchief and stands in a grassy field, crying as she points to the ground. The father becomes fixated with her. He imposes his own memories of the Vietnam war on her and assumes that she is looking to dig up bodies from the ground, much like a gardener would unearth soil to grow plants. He says that he would go help her if he could. The woman functions as a symbol of his unresolved trauma due to the war, which causes him to compare the grassy field of the women to rice paddies in Vietnam where he saw dead bodies floating in the water. 

The Girl becomes fascinated with a butterfly encased in glass on a shelf in Mel’s office. She becomes convinced that the butterfly is alive because she hears a whispering noise from the glass, like “wings brushing against a windowpane” (25). She tells Ba that the butterfly is trapped but wants to escape. The uncles compare the butterfly’s crying to Ba’s crying, and in this moment, we understand that the butterfly becomes a symbol for Ba—as well as other characters in the book—who are trapped in the circumstances and unable to take flight. The Girl’s unsuccessful attempt to free the dead butterfly can be seen as her way of trying to free herself and her family from their own painful circumstances.

Unlike the butterfly, the glass animals—many of them horses—are unable to speak, according to the Girl. She concludes that “[t]he uncles were unaware it wasn’t the butterfly but rather these glass animals that had no soul” (31). Decorative items like the glass animals are seen as objects that people with means accumulate in America, but the Girl exposes these decorative animals as hollow, empty artifacts that are devoid of meaning. 

When the Girl meets Mel at the airport, one of the first things she notices is a set of silver and gold keys dangling from his belt and making noise. He carries them like they are important; the Girl notes that they look important. The keys serve as a shiny symbol of Mel’s power and status over the refugees. He is the gatekeeper who allows them to come into America and he employs them and houses them—at least temporarily. The keys jangling signal his powerful presence. 

Ma’s purse is a symbol of aspirational power. Although she often doesn’t have a use for it, she takes her purse with her wherever she goes as a means of touting the appearance of money. Although the pursue is somewhat similar to Mel’s keys, it is also different in that Ma’s purse is largely an illusion. In reality, she does not hold much wealth—or power—as a lower-income refugee from Vietnam in America. 

As a gardener, trees and plant life serve as a symbol of contentment for Ba. The only time he seems to be at peace is when he is gardening and nurturing life, even though he is unable to nurture himself. Plants take on a different meaning for the Girl, who references three specific kinds repeatedly: eucalyptus, jasmine, and palms. Eucalyptus—which can be found in both southern California and Vietnam—serve as a symbol of war, both in Vietnam and in the children’s imaginations when they hurl eucalyptus cones at one another in play fights. The Kissing box—a site of emotional turbulence—is also placed against a eucalyptus tree.

The fragrance of jasmine flowers hangs in the air as the neighborhood children play. Jasmines serve as a symbol of innocence, which decays as the flowers fade from white to yellow and as the children age into adolescence. Finally, the palm trees, which are widespread throughout southern California, serve as symbols of happiness, prosperity, and the American dream. We see this when the Girl arrives at the airport and looks at a poster of a woman tanning under palm trees. But this happiness often eludes the family members, and the palm tree can sometimes function as a mockery of their pain and isolation in America. For example, the landlord in the red apartment replaces the swimming pool with a palm tree, thereby replacing their connection to the sea and Vietnam via the swimming pool with a lonely tree that none of them like. 

The Girl reduces much of the world around her to metaphors—specifically to animals. Many of them involve birds, including a chapter entitled “the bones of birds” in which her father—due to his inability to handle his PTSD—appears frail like the bones of birds. The Girl also imagines flying over the memories of her past like a bird and flying away from her family altogether. Birds also appear as symbols—likely representing the refugees—in Mr. Russell’s dream, when he imagines them flying beyond the horizon and perhaps flying to him in America. Ultimately, birds function in the novel as a symbol of flight and escape.

In this book, faces are seen as something akin to a gateway into a person’s thoughts and deepest feelings. They are fundamental to establishing and maintaining connections. There are innocent examples of this when the Girl guides the hand of the boy in the Kissing Room down her face to establish a romantic spark. And then are more profound connections, such as when Ma falls in love with Ba after seeing his face in a movie theater and imagines his face to keep her company after she’s been separated from her husband and child. This connection to her husband extends even through the Girl’s face, who closely resembles her husband. Her mother will look into her daughter’s face when he is away at war, trying to ascertain through some divine magic of her profile whether he is safe. 

In the book, lights are associated with positive forces and darkness with sorrow, specifically, sorrow associated with water. We see this contrast between light and dark when the Girl sees her father crying in the refugee camp at the same time that the moon is enveloped in clouds, creating darkness. It is also evident when her father is fishing at the pier and sees the bright city lights, which stand in contrast with the dark water at his feet. The darkness seems to be engulfing her father. By contrast, when he goes to pick up his wife, he sees her considering whether to step into the light of a lamppost and leave behind the darkness.

Later on, it is also revealed that the lights in the book are a physical representation of the spirit of the Girl’s dead brother, whom the Girl describes as glowing in his watery home or grave where he drowned. She says that “his light would only shine brighter”(146)with time, symbolizing how his memory will stay with them over the years. The Girl rushes toward the lights of the silver fish in the book’s final chapter, which serve as both an allegory for the Girl searching for her brother and, perhaps, light winning out over darkness.