The Key by Võ Phiên
"The Key" by Võ Phiên is a poignant narrative that explores the experiences of Vietnamese refugees during and after their harrowing escape from Vietnam. The story begins with the reflections of an unnamed narrator, who recalls the first vivid memory of arriving at a refugee camp in Guam after a long journey at sea. The significance of the shower facilities emerges as a central theme, serving as a space for interaction, socialization, and the sharing of stories among refugees.
As the story progresses, the narrator recounts a moving conversation with a fellow refugee in a camp in Pennsylvania, who reveals his deep-seated guilt about leaving his elderly, senile father behind in Vietnam. This man had promised to secure a coffin for his father, a cultural practice reflecting familial responsibility, but due to the urgency of their escape, he left critical valuables locked away in a wardrobe back home. The weight of the key to that wardrobe becomes a symbol of his guilt and the burdens of memory that haunt the refugees. Ultimately, the narrative intertwines the personal struggles of the refugees with broader themes of loss and the challenge of moving forward, while highlighting the profound connections formed in shared adversity. This story resonates with the complexities of displacement and the emotional legacies that accompany such experiences.
On this Page
The Key by Võ Phiên
First published: 1985
Type of plot: Social realism, frame story
Time of work: 1975
Locale: Guam; Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania; and Saigon, Vietnam
Principal Characters:
The narrator , a Vietnamese refugeeA fellow refugee , a man about fifty years oldHis father , a ninety-three-year-old man, who was left behind
The Story
The story opens with the reflections of an unnamed narrator, a former refugee who muses that it is strange that the first picture in his memory is that of a shower. He tells how the ship he was on, carrying nine thousand refugees from Vietnam, anchored at the American island of Guam at about 3:00 a.m. on July 5, 1975. After leaving the boats, the refugees first headed to the showers, where they washed after their long journey. The showers, the narrator explains, then became an important part of their daily lives. Every day, as they would line up before the showers, they would socialize and exchange news.
The narration then shifts to a refugee camp in the mainland United States, at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania. The showers there were also important but cruder than those in Guam. The Pennsylvania camp was divided into sections, with each section of about one hundred people assigned to a small, dark shower room, with three showers so that three people of the same sex could wash at the same time. Because the shower rooms were airtight, some people used them as steam baths to cure colds. Many people went into the shower to tape Vietnamese songs and the voices of their friends.
While showering one day, the narrator hears the confessional story of one of his fellow refugees. Described as shy and in his mid-fifties, the man had his wife, his daughter, and two sons with him in the camp. His family was more complete than most of those of the other refugees, who had been forced to leave family members behind. Despite this, he and his wife always seemed sad.
The fellow refugee became unusually talkative during the shower. He told the narrator that he had a father who was ninety-three years old and senile. The father had asked him to buy a coffin, a common practice in rural Vietnam. Living in the city, the refugee had not followed the old custom of buying his father a coffin in preparation for death but had promised to buy him a good one after the old man died.
As it became evident that all of South Vietnam would fall to the forces of the north, the refugee and his family made preparations to flee. However, the father was too old to take along, so the family hid all of their money and valuables, including an ounce of gold for the coffin, in a locked wardrobe for any friend or neighbor who would take care of the elderly father. The middle-aged man and his family had a difficult escape on an overcrowded boat and barely survived until they were rescued by an American ship. Immediately after the rescue, though, he put his hand in his pocket and realized that the key to the locked wardrobe was still in his pocket.
Ever since then, the man has been tormented by thoughts of the friends and neighbors searching for the valuables. He worries about robbers breaking in to look for the hidden wealth and possibly beating his father. Full of guilt, he wears the key around his neck, like a Christian religious symbol. The story reminds the initial narrator of all that he himself had failed to do and all that he had left behind him. He never gets a chance to tell the fellow refugee about the metaphorical key around his own neck, though, because the man seems to avoid him and the two never meet in the shower again.