On Distant Ground by Robert Olen Butler

First published: 1985

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: 1975

Locale: Baltimore, Maryland, and Saigon, Vietnam

Principal Characters:

• David Fleming, an Army captain about to be court-martialed for setting a Viet Cong officer free
• Jennifer Fleming, David’s wife, who gives birth to their son during the trial
• Carl Lomas, David’s Army lawyer
• Kenneth Trask, a CIA officer who helps David return to Vietnam
• Pham Van Tuyen, the Viet Cong officer David set free
• Nguyen Thi Tuyet Suong, David’s lover in Vietnam
• Khai, David’s Vietnamese son

The Novel

On Distant Ground is the fictional account of Army captain David Fleming and his internal and external conflicts with his experiences in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Within the novel, Robert Olen Butler has not used formal chapter breaks; rather, white space divides one section from the next. The first two-thirds of the novel alternates between scenes in present time and scenes from Fleming’s time in Vietnam. It is in these flashbacks that the reader is given the background for Fleming’s court-martial.

The novel begins with the preliminary stages of David’s trial and the birth of his and Jennifer’s son, David Junior. David is being tried for aiding the enemy. He kidnapped Pham Van Tuyen, a known Viet Cong officer, from Con Son, the island where Tuyen was being held prisoner by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Carl Lomas, David’s lawyer, seems more concerned about the trial than David and tries to get him to think of anything he might be able to say in his own defense. David cannot think of anything; he freed Tuyen out of compassion when he saw the words “hygiene is healthful” written on Tuyen’s vacated cell at the interrogation center in Bien Hoa.

During the preliminary trial stages, Jennifer and David’s son is born, and David realizes that he now has another responsibility, that of a family. Both he and Jennifer become brittle as the pressure surrounding David’s position and the real possibility of a prison term become more real to them. Adding to the tension is David’s sudden realization that he has a son in Vietnam. He has no concrete knowledge of this situation, but he sees the news reports about children of American servicemen being evacuated from Vietnam and realizes that the reason Suong, his Vietnamese lover, disappeared was because she was pregnant. Suddenly obsessed, he realizes that he must return to Vietnam and bring his son home before Saigon falls to the Communist government.

David’s trial and his growing concern about his son occur simultaneously. He sets up a meeting with Kenneth Trask, his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contact, and apprises him of the situation. Trask informs him that he can do nothing about the outcome of the trial; if David is not sent to prison, however, there is a chance that Trask could arrange for him to return to Vietnam to try to locate his son. Rather than a prison term, David is given a reduction in rank, a loss of pay, and a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

Trask arranges for David to return to Vietnam using a Canadian passport and other false identification papers. He is warned that Saigon will fall to the Communists in three days at the most. Once he is in Saigon, David begins the near-impossible task of locating Suong or part of her family. Her house in Saigon has been taken over by squatters, and the family home in the country is in disrepair. One servant is left, and she tells David that Suong has disappeared and her mother, Madame Trung, is still in Saigon. David returns to Saigon, and the Communists soon take over the city.

David locates Madame Trung and his son, Khai. He also learns that Suong had openly opposed the government of South Vietnam and had been in prison in Saigon for a year. Convinced that the Communist government would free her, he goes to the prison in search of information. He is taken to the office of Pham Van Tuyen, who is now the director of security for Saigon. Tuyen apparently does not recognize David, and since David is supposedly working for a Canadian organization that has Communist leanings, he agrees to try to find out what he can about Suong.

David returns to Madame Trung’s the same evening and learns that a soldier had delivered Suong’s ashes and some of her possessions earlier in the evening. Madame Trung convinces him to take his boy back to America and gives him the final payment for the illegal trip out of the country she had been planning.

David leaves during the night with Khai and makes his way to the rendezvous point. Unfortunately, the Communist officials have arrested Mr. Quang, the boat captain who was going to smuggle them out of the country. David is knocked out and wakes up in prison. From there, he is taken to a private audience with Tuyen.

Tuyen does, in fact, know who David is. Through a long interrogation, David does convince Tuyen that he is not a CIA spy and that his only motivation for returning to Vietnam was to find his son and take him back to America. Possibly in gratitude for David’s freeing of him, Tuyen allows David and Khai to leave Vietnam and return to America.

The Characters

David Fleming, an Army intelligence captain, is not, at the beginning of the novel, a sympathetic character. He has, by his own admission, allowed a known Viet Cong officer to escape from a South Vietnamese prison. Through David’s own thoughts, the reader is able to learn why he did what he did. There is a great sense of helplessness that is conveyed when David tells his attorney, Carl Lomas, that he can think of no way to explain his actions; the motivations are too complicated. David does, however, exhibit tremendous integrity. The moment he realizes that he has a child in Vietnam, he contacts Kenneth Trask and has him work out a plan for David to return to Vietnam to find his child, who he is sure is a son. While there are aspects to David’s character that the reader might find unappealing, he is an honorable man. Butler refuses to have a stock Vietnam veteran as his main character. Rather, Fleming is a sensitive, complex man for whom there are no easy answers.

Jennifer Fleming, David’s wife, is seen, more often than not, through the eyes of her husband. The reader is immediately sympathetic toward her because she is pregnant and vulnerable. Her husband is being court-martialed, and there is a strong possibility that she will be rearing their child while he is in prison. The reader is impressed by her strength throughout the ordeal. In addition, she will vent her frustrations and fears to David. Jennifer is a strong character, but she is not a martyr. She is, after some consideration, able to accept David’s son from his affair with Suong and finally encourages him to go back to Vietnam.

Kenneth Trask is the typical CIA operative. He is secretive and constantly seems to lurk in shadows. His character is developed through his actions. While he admits that there is no way that he can alter the outcome of David’s trial, he is willing to make arrangements for the documents that will allow David to enter South Vietnam even though the country is about to fall to the Communists. While little is revealed about Trask, he is the one character who seems immediately to understand David’s need to return for his son.

Pham Van Tuyen is the Viet Cong officer whom David releases from the South Vietnamese prison. He is a complex man who is seen at the bottom and top of his career. The reader first meets him when he has escaped from his jailers on Con Son Island. As a result of the torture he has endured, Tuyen is weak and unable to function well. It is unsure how much of the situation he understands; however, he allows David to take him to a helicopter and back to his home. The next time the reader sees Tuyen, he is the director of security for the new Communist government in Saigon. Ironically, it is he who now has David’s fate in his hands. Through his actions, he reveals that he, too, is a complex man who does not see actions as all black or white. Possibly to the surprise of the reader, he does allow David to maintain his cover as a Canadian and return to America with his son.

Critical Context

On Distant Ground was Butler’s fourth novel. The novel served to place Butler firmly within the ranks of Vietnam authors such as Tim O’Brien, Lynda Van Deventer, W. D. Ehrhart, and Larry Heineman, who, like Butler, helped to give the reading public a new, realistic view of the Vietnam War.

In the novel, Butler experiments with flashback, through which device nearly all Fleming’s experiences are told. Butler also eliminates the traditional chapter breaks, relying on white space to signal his changes and giving the novel the feel of a seamless narrative. While the story is told in the third person, the main focus of the novel is on David Fleming, and it is through him that the reader receives most of the information about events and characters.

All of Butler’s books have received critical acclaim. His collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees living in Louisiana, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1993), received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. That work and the remainder of his impressive canon have made Butler one of the important voices in late twentieth century American literature.

Bibliography

Beidler, Philip D. Re-Writing America: Vietnam Authors in Their Generation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991. In this thought-provoking book, Beidler places Vietnam authors within their generation, which provides the reader with the appropriate context for reading Vietnam fiction. In addition, there is a very good section on Butler that places his novels within the genre. Beidler also establishes and discusses the relationship between Butler’s The Alleys of Eden (1981), Sun Dogs (1982), and On Distant Ground, which make up a trilogy about the Vietnam War.

Booklist. LXXXI, February 15, 1985, p. 820.

Butler, Robert Olen. “Louisiana: God, It’s the Mekong Delta!’” Interview by Joseph Olshan. People 39 (May 31, 1993): 22. In this interview, Butler talks about his experiences in Vietnam and how they influenced him and his writing. He also recalls his first view of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and how much it reminded him geographically of Vietnam.

Butler, Robert Olen. “The Process of Writing a Novel.” The Writer 95 (April, 1982): 11-13. Butler describes the process he used to write The Alleys of Eden. Clifford Wilkes, who has a minor role in On Distant Ground, is the main character in The Alleys of Eden. In addition, it is useful to see the process Butler went through to gather and organize his material for the novel.

Kelsay, Michael. “Robert Olen Butler.” Poets and Writers Magazine 24 (May/June, 1996): 40-49. Kelsay connects the themes and subjects of Butler’s novels to his three-year hitch in Vietnam during the war. He shows how Butler used the first-person narrative voice to shape his personal style.

Klein, Joe. “Soldiers and Doctors.” The New York Times Book Review, April 12, 1985, p. 26. Klein places On Distant Ground within the canon of Vietnam fiction. In addition, he writes that the story’s “pyramiding absurdities seem not merely plausible, but inevitable.”

Kirkus Reviews. LII, December 1, 1984, p. 1104.

Library Journal. CX, February 15, 1985, p. 178.

Los Angeles Times. February 12, 1985, V, p. 8.

The New York Times Book Review. XC, April 21, 1985, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXVI, December 21, 1984, p. 82.

Ryan, Maureen. “Robert Olen Butler’s Vietnam Veterans: Strangers in an Alien Home.” The Midwest Quarterly 38 (Spring, 1997): 274-294. Discusses narrative evidence that The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, and On Distant Ground should be regarded as a trilogy. The protagonists of each book served together in an intelligence unit, and their lives were so affected by their war experiences that none of them could adapt to contemporary American life. An interesting comparison of Butler’s three war novels.

Steinberg, Sybil. “Robert Olen Butler: The Pulitzer Prize Winner Is Not Resting on His Laurels.” Publishers Weekly 241 (January 3, 1994): 60-61. Discusses Butler’s book They Whisper, as well as his other works and writing career. Provides a useful overview of the body of his work.

Washington Post Book World. XV, April 21, 1985, p. 11.