The Alleys of Eden by Robert Olen Butler
"The Alleys of Eden" by Robert Olen Butler is a poignant exploration of the themes of cultural and spiritual displacement resulting from the Vietnam War. The novel centers on U.S. Army Intelligence officer Clifford Wilkes and his girlfriend Lanh, a Vietnamese bargirl, highlighting their complex relationship against the backdrop of war and its aftermath. After a traumatic incident during an interrogation, Wilkes deserts his post, feeling disillusioned with America, which he perceives as characterized by vanity and arrogance. He seeks refuge in the vibrant yet tumultuous life of Saigon, where he grapples with his attraction to both Lanh and the country she represents.
As the couple flees Saigon during its fall and relocates to the Midwest, they encounter a stark cultural clash that deepens their sense of alienation. Lanh, overwhelmed by her new environment and language barrier, begins to experience a profound loss of identity, while Wilkes finds himself increasingly estranged from both Vietnam and America. The novel illustrates the emotional and psychological toll of their experiences, culminating in a recognition of the enduring impacts of war and cultural collision. Butler crafts a narrative that not only depicts the personal struggles of his characters but also serves as a broader commentary on the American experience during and after the Vietnam War.
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The Alleys of Eden by Robert Olen Butler
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1981
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Butler’s first published novel, The Alleys of Eden, explores his often-repeated theme of the spiritual and cultural displacement of people by the Vietnam War. The book tells the story of U.S. Army Intelligence officer Clifford Wilkes and his girlfriend, Lanh, a Vietnamese bargirl.
When a prisoner he is interrogating dies of a sudden heart attack, Wilkes decides to desert; he feels that he can no longer believe in the United States, a country defined in his view by vanity and arrogance. He goes to live in an apartment on a Saigon alley with a bargirl named Lanh. She wonders why Wilkes loves her, as they are so different, both physically and culturally, from each other. Wilkes is as attracted to Lanh as he is to her country. For him, Vietnam has an integrity, a sense of self that he believes America no longer possesses. Lanh comes to understand this and tells Wilkes what he cannot articulate: that he can no longer go home because home is a place where a person feels innocent. She knows that Wilkes will no longer feel innocent in America. Butler writes, “The country he left was empty, the country he was in was doomed.”
During the fall of Saigon, Wilkes and Lanh flee Vietnam for the United States and an Illinois town. In the United States, Wilkes is a fugitive, and Lanh, who speaks no English, is overwhelmed. Everything about the Midwest scares Lanh, even the size of the people. She points out that she “did not feel Vietnamese in Vietnam,” but she feels Vietnamese in America, a stranger in a strange world.
As Lanh’s sense of cultural displacement intensifies, her relationship with Wilkes unravels. Wilkes tries to save their relationship until he finds Lanh praying one day. He asks what she is praying for, and she answers that she does not know. As Lanh’s personality diminishes, Wilkes comes to understand that the woman he loves is being tortured, just as they believed they would have been tortured if they had remained in Saigon. The torture, however, is not physical; it is mental and is inflicted upon them both by the collision of cultures they find in America. Lanh goes to live with a Vietnamese family, where she at least has her language. Wilkes, who had expected to feel like a stranger in America, finds his growing retrospective alienation with Vietnam to be something he had not expected. Wilkes flees to Canada and leaves Lanh to live with the American representatives of her people, the Binh family.
In The Alleys of Eden, Butler writes about the American misadventure in Vietnam. The sexual collision between the American soldiers and Vietnamese prostitutes serves as a symbol of the war, just as the clash of cultures heightens the sense of a war fought on American soil. The Alleys of Eden provides a vision of what it is to be American and what it is to be Vietnamese.
Bibliography
Beidler, Philip D. Re-Writing America: Vietnam Authors in Their Generation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Broyard, Anatole. Review of The Alleys of Eden, by Robert Olen Butler. The New York Times, November 11, 1981, 29.
Lohafer, Susan. “Real-World Characters in Fictional Story Worlds: Robert Olen Butler’s ’JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction.’” In The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis, edited by Per Winther et al. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
Myers, Thomas. Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Packer, George. “From the Mekong to the Bayous.” The New York Times Book Review 97 (June 7, 1992): 24.
Ryan, Maureen. “Robert Olen Butler’s Vietnam Veterans: Strangers in an Alien Home.” The Midwest Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1997): 274-294.
Sartisky, Michael. “A Pulitzer Profile: Louisiana’s Robert Olen Butler.” Cultural Vistas: Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 4 (Fall, 1993): 10-21.
Womack, Kenneth. “Reading the Titanic: Contemporary Literary Representations of the Ship of Dreams.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 5, no. 1 (2003): 34-44.