The Mountains Sing

Although birds appear frequently in The Mountains Sing, they are first mentioned as an absence. Just before Chapter 2’s airstrike begins, Hương “strain[s] [her] ears but hear[s] no bird” (3), immediately establishing birds as a symbol of peace and normalcy. In the idyllic episode that opens Diệu Lan’s own story, she notes, “Birds sang on tree branches” (23), and Hương makes similar observations when times are good for her. As such, characters strive to help birds when they find them in need: Diệu Lan’s children attempt to do this together on the day of the purge, and, when young Đạt is crying for his lost brother Minh, Diệu Lan reminds him of the time the two of them “found a bird nest in the eave” and “[t]ogether watched the eggs hatch” (174). After Đạt tells her, “We fed the baby birds with insects, until they were big enough to fly away,” she invokes the presence of birds to assure him: “One day we’ll be back to our home, Son. We’ll be back and birds from all over the world can come and nest with us” (174).

Beyond simply signaling harmony, birds sometimes appear as vessels for wisdom in the form of proverbs and songs. Toward the beginning of the family’s flight northward, Diệu Lan sings a bird-centered lullaby to her children: “Oh ah, the crane seeking food at night, it perches on too weak of a branch and plunges headfirst into the pond” (172). This song, which preaches the value of care and caution, is an excellent reminder for Diệu Lan at the outset of the most treacherous days of her life.

On a similar note, characters employ birds figuratively to make sense of their lives. Diệu Lan does this twice when recovering her children, noting that “time was a bird wrestling to flee from me, taking on its wings the possibility that I’d never see my children again” (282) as she prepares to retrieve them, and then calling herself “a tree trunk growing new branches, a bird regaining some feathers on its wings” (289) once she has succeeded. These contradictory phrasings indicate how the same avian attribute, the ability to fly, is maddening when not possessed yet invigorating once acquired.

The most significant bird symbol in the novel is the Sơn ca that Hoàng carves for his daughter. Though it symbolizes Hoàng himself, it also represents luck and hope, especially for Đạt, who credits his surviving the war to this item: “The Sơn ca bird stayed in my pocket, though. It brought me incredible luck” (165). Perhaps hoping for some of that luck herself, Hương keeps it with her almost constantly throughout the remainder of the novel. While she endures additional hardships after this point, she notes the Sơn ca’s presence at many of the most hopeful moments left in her story. It is there at her first meeting with Tâm, in which he pretends to hear the bird talk, establishing a spiritual link between himself and Hoàng. It is there when the family reunites with Minh. Finally, it is there in the novel’s final chapter, appearing to help Hương’s story and her grandmother’s songs reach Diệu Lan, “the tallest mountain,” in heaven, thereby living out the meaning of its name, a name that inspired that of the novel itself: “The Mountain Sings” (126).