Who Is Hang's Identity In Paradise Of The Blind By Duong Thu Huong

Materialism can tie one down, locking them into a life that prevents them from discovering their true identity. In the Paradise of the Blind, the protagonist Hang, a curious and rebellious young woman that is searching for herself outside the confines of Vietnam. She experiences the poverty that is evident in most of the citizens in Vietnam through the 1960s and the 1970s. This poverty has created an environment where money, vast amounts of food, and luxuries are obsessed over. In fact, it is the guiding force of their lives as characters like Que work endlessly to provide for her family, and Aunt Tam who visualizes her riches as proof for the work she has done since her struggles. Flowers plays a crucial role in the novel as a symbol of growth

In her 1988 novel, Paradise of the Blind, Duong Thu Huong showcases Hang’s disapproval of extravagance in order to establish Hang’s desire to find her own identity. One that evolves past the stagnant lives of her Vietnamese community, by reconstructing the set standards of materialism.

Duong Thu Huong employs foil characterization to emphasize Hang’s contrasting views on materialism to the rest of her family in Vietnam, illuminating how her identity doesn’t conform to the traditional views. She will not be able to explore her identity as she is pressured to continue her family legacy and held back by the pressures to accept the lavishness her Aunt leaves her. One of the most evident visualizations of the differences in Hang's opinions and the rest of Vietnam is in the foil character Aunt Tam, who unlike Hang lives a more luxurious lifestyle. The reason behind this materialism is portrayed in Aunt Tam’s suffering after the Land Reform movements, which attacked and tortured landowners, a group which Aunt Tam belonged in, “People say, I’m extravagant. I tell them, ‘Yes, that’s right,and I’m offering this to myself in memory of all my suffering,’” (Duong 79). Aunt

The sentence, “..like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave.”(Duong 88) as stated before was the first instance of Hang beginning to rebel against her culture's materialistic standards. The full circle moment happens at the ending of the novel when Hang is taking full charge and understands herself outside of her culture. “We can honor the wishes of the dead with a few flowers on a grave somewhere.”(Duong 258). Duong references “honoring the dead with a few flowers on a grave somewhere” to serve as Hang's reflection on how she accepted that the Vietnamese culture was a major aspect of who she was. Then it jumps to, “ I cannot squander my life tending to these faded flowers”(Duong 258) Representing how Hang physically and mentally detached herself from materialism and moved forward as a new profound independent woman. It poetically ties back to the exposition of the novel as it started and ended with character development with flowers and graves. Two items that symbolizes life and death alluding to Hang’s death of extravagance to the birth of self