The Mountains Sing

These chapters see Ngọc and Đạt grow immensely as characters, both in importance and in moral fiber. Đạt rises in prominence, moving from the plot’s sidelines to become a sort of third narrator. Most of Chapter 8 is his story told in his dialogue, the first time the reader hears so extensively from anyone other than Hương or Diệu Lan. Even in Diệu Lan’s chapter, “The Walk,” he is a central figure. With Minh gone, Đạt is the oldest child left, and his initiative in taking a job at the pho shop sets in motion the unfortunate but necessary plan that enables the family to survive.

Although Đạt will emerge from this crisis strong and confident, the war takes a greater toll on him. Like his mother, he struggles with feelings of guilt, blaming himself for his friend Thành’s death: “I hated myself for not pulling Thành along as I escaped the common shelter. I could have saved him” (164). Worse yet, he wallows in self-pity: “When I looked down and saw the stumps of my legs, I wished I’d died. What use is a man without his legs?” (165). The depression brought on by this trauma leads to his insecurity and an alcohol use disorder. Despite Nhung’s continued love and devotion, he rebuffs her, his feelings of impotence manifesting sexually. Alcohol has become his primary refuge, but fortunately he is not shut off to his family’s love. From Diệu Lan’s refusal to judge him for his drinking, to Ngọc’s excitement at his return even in the midst of her own debilitating trauma and her efforts to help him overcome his erectile dysfunction, the immense support Đạt receives on his path toward healing and sobriety is a fundamental element in this section.

As Ngọc emerges from her depression, she too grows in prominence, and this journey helps her again become the mother Hương needs her to be. Although she too has been greeted with love and warmth by her family members, the depths of her shame leave her even more resistant to their efforts to reach her, a reaction that is tragically reasonable considering the horror with which Hương, Diệu Lan, and Đạt greet the possibility that Ngọc might have killed a baby. In one of the novel’s most morally complex moments, Hương must violate her mother’s privacy to break through the wall she has put up. Still, Hương’s naivete keeps her from grasping the rationale behind her mother’s abortion, and this misunderstanding leads her to judge Ngọc: “Here I was, thinking that I’d found the key to my mother’s secret, yet once I opened her door, I wanted to lock it and throw the key away. Sometimes something is so terrible that you need to pretend it doesn’t exist” (207).

Tellingly, heartfelt conversations are what are needed for Ngọc to begin her own recovery, first with Hương, then with Diệu Lan. After these two breakthroughs, Ngọc “was no longer alone. She began talking to Uncle Đạt, too. I heard their murmurs whenever I walked past their rooms in the evening” (220). This demonstration of the power of sincere, face-to-face communication to eradicate guilt and despair and to cultivate love and self-worth comprises a lesson for Hương. She internalizes the wisdom of this lesson even as these events are unfolding, for it is she who “made Grandma and my mother go out with each other” (219), precipitating the emotional conversation that leads to their reconciliation.

Ngọc’s growth constitutes the resolution of a long arc, one that begins back in the events of Diệu Lan’s chapters with the betrayal she feels at her own mother’s hands. Following Minh’s capture and Đạt’s abandonment, Ngọc is the eldest remaining child, and the most aware of the degree to which Diệu Lan is intentionally leaving her children behind. Diệu Lan only abandons Đạt because her presence so close to Vīnh Phúc puts them all at risk, and she only leaves Hạnh and Thuận behind because they become too ill for the journey. Given Ngọc’s age and strength, she probably could have accompanied her mother all the way to Hanoi, and her continued companionship would have been a major boon to the family’s prospects, not to mention this path would have spared Ngọc the tragedies that befell her on her own. However, she is too hurt. Convinced that Diệu Lan is abdicating her maternal responsibilities, Ngọc asks her:

Why should I trust you? You said you wouldn’t let us out of your sight, but you’ve been doing the opposite. […] Every mother has a choice. Every mother has to take care of her children (196).

It takes decades and a set of circumstances that lead Ngọc to abandon and neglect her own child for her to realize that, as Đạt puts it, “Grandma saved us” (155) in acting as she did. Nowhere are the parallels between Ngọc’s anger toward Diệu Lan and Hương’s anger toward Ngọc more obvious than in their nearly identical assertions of eternal maternal resentment: Ngọc tells Hương, “I’m never going to forgive you. Never, ever!” (109), not knowing that two decades earlier Ngọc had told her own mother, “I will never forgive you for doing this to us. Never, ever” (189). Perhaps it is Ngọc’s unique position as both mother and daughter amidst unthinkable crises that allows her to achieve moral growth in these chapters.

Ngọc’s words and actions before this growth do not help Diệu Lan live with the tough choices she makes during the family’s flight north, and yet Diệu Lan remains her own worst critic. Her remarks regarding this episode comment on the unforgiving realities of motherhood in times of turmoil. On the one hand, it is her role as mother that gives her the strength she needs to carry on despite the immense tragedy she has endured:

Looking at the children, the desire not just to live, but to thrive, surged into my heart. If those evil people wanted me to surrender, they couldn’t be more wrong. As long as I was a mother, I would never, ever give up (170).

However, the cost of this survival is brutal and lasting: “[M]y guilt is still too overwhelming for me to feel that I’m good enough as a mother” (185). Despite the intensity of her remorse, Diệu Lan wisely recognizes that “being a mother is never easy, though. It’s about failing, learning, and then failing again” (185). While she agrees with young Ngọc’s harsh criticisms, she accepts that burden because it is the only path she can see forward: “I saw the fierceness of your mother’s glance. I absorbed it. I deserved all the blame, for what I was doing to my children. But I had to save them” (189).

Vietnam helps Diệu Lan do just that, a role suggested by her description of the landscape she beholds as dawn breaks after the family’s first night of flight: “Darkness was thinning, the shadows of villages that bordered the horizon looked like women whose backs were bent with the burdens of life” (174). While this land is home to the villainous mob that has brought Diệu Lan and her family to this desperate juncture, it contains far more of these kind, hardworking folk who will be their salvation: the peasant woman who helps them “look poor” to evade pursuit (171), Thảo the teacher and Hiền the nun who love and care for Hạnh and Thuận, even the shopkeeper who employs Đạt and enables his survival, though she does so without any apparent compassion. Perhaps more than any other, this chapter demonstrates Nguyễn’s conviction that at its core Vietnam and its people are a wellspring of goodness and beauty.

This sense is further advanced by the symbolic role of caves in both Đạt’s and Ngọc’s wartime experience. While on the (literal and figurative) surface, Vietnam is overrun by violence and tragedy, Đạt and Ngọc both find peace and renewal when they venture into the land's core. In Phong Nha, the “gigantic system of caves” in which Đạt takes shelter, he feels “shielded” (159):

At night, artists who’d travelled all the way from Hà Nội sang, danced, and read poetry to us. For the first time in months, we were able to talk and laugh freely. We no longer had to be afraid of our own voices (159).

Descending into the land itself, Đạt and his companions live meaningfully once more: “The cave was so peaceful,” he tells Hương, “that I wanted to stay there, forever. I imagined getting married and raising my children there” (160). Although Ngọc does not wax poetic about her experience in a cave, it is arguably even more crucial than her brother’s, coming as it does after her rape and captivity: “[W]hen I came to, I was in a cave, surrounded by local people who’d abandoned their village for the cave because of the bombings. One of them was a traditional healer. She cured my injuries with medicinal plants” (218). Though Ngọc’s emotional injuries would continue to plague her for some time, this healer, by teaching her “many things about jungle medicine” (218), also planted the seeds for the passion that would lead Ngọc back to a fulfilling career in medicine.

Fate continues to develop as a theme in these chapters, particularly Diệu Lan’s. With her life entirely laid to waste by the Land Reform, she recognizes that Túc’s ominous predictions have come true. However, rather than despairing at this realization, the reinforcement of her faith in the forces of destiny and karma give her a renewed yet humble strength to carry on. As they flee north, Diệu Lan comforts a tearful Đạt by telling him, “Heaven has eyes, Darling. Heaven will punish people who do bad things” (173). When Đạt gets a job, Diệu Lan senses a divine providence at work as she rests under what she realizes is a Bodhi tree: “Buddha had meditated and became enlightened under the Bodhi tree. I felt his blessing on a cool wind that caressed my face” (181). After again encountering a Bodhi tree that overhangs Hiền’s pagoda, Diệu Lan finds the courage to ask the nun about her fate. Hiền’s assertion that “the star that predicts your fortune has shifted a little” (195) allows Diệu Lan to envision a hopeful future that is not mutually exclusive with Túc’s predictions. Diệu Lan begins to learn that, as with so much else in this novel, moderation is key when negotiating between fate and chance.

Moderation in matters like these eludes young Hương, especially given the uncommonly tragic and trying circumstances of her life. Before her reconciliation with her mother, she finds herself wishing she could run away and live with Hạnh: “Perhaps under the light of my aunt’s lucky star, I could be free from the omens that seemed to cling on to our family” (205). Rather than recognizing that Hạnh’s family’s success is linked to their embrace of the Communist Party, she sees it as a black-and-white matter of fate. Later, as she considers suicide after arguing with her mother, she again rationalizes this decision with an illogically simplistic appeal to fate: “We had all been cursed, generations of the Trần family. I had to end it now” (216). Of course, this pessimistic conceptualization fails to account for Hạnh’s prosperity that she so recently envied, and Hương’s suicide would be anything but an end to their family’s curse.

Fortunately, as Hương moves through these trials and learns more of Diệu Lan’s story, she comes to recognize that the truth is more nuanced, as well as to appreciate the power of the truth itself. Diệu Lan’s frustrations at Hạnh’s complicity in state censorship, the same censorship that Diệu Lan laments has kept the Land Reform out of Hương’s schoolbooks, help Hương to recognize the lies that uphold the status quo. While these lies and their power frighten Hương, especially given her budding aspirations to become a writer and her conviction that she “couldn’t twist [her] words to please the ears of those in power” (229), Diệu Lan’s bravery and moral rectitude help Hương to internalize her grandmother’s wisdom on the matter: “[Y]ou’re old enough to know that history will write itself in people’s memories, and as long as those memories live on, we can have faith that we can do better” (166). Just as Diệu Lan made hard choices to protect her family, so will Hương shoulder the risks that come with telling hard truths to the benefit of those in Vietnam and beyond.