Blog 1

After watching the P.B.S documentary, I was not aware that the secret police of Ngo Dinh Diem's forced the Vietnamese to practice Catholicism. The Vietnamese were use to worshipping their ancestors but since Diem was a devoted Catholic, it wouldn't be a good look to have your leader practicing one religion and his people practicing another. When the Buddhist tried to protest against the government, Diem took action against them by force when he didn't have to and the reasoning for that could have been because they were Buddhist.

In Robert Olen Butler's shorty story "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain", he combines the narratives of Ho Chi Minh and the conversations that he has with his old friend Dao when Ho makes his nightly visits and the narratives of the visits from his family the following mornings. In the first narrative it is clear that there is someting bothering Ho, for it was obvious that he was unsettled how he spoke and acted around Dao. Ho was dead so it was confusing to Dao why Ho wasnt at peace and in the afterlife with the other deceased. "His Hands were still covered with sugar and his mind was as it has been for the past two nights, very much distracted" (248). The type of things that Ho had to do in the North was actions that Dao wouldn't understand because he hadn't experienced it. Dao also talked about his concerns with his son in law Thang and his grandson Loi. He overheard them talking about the killing of a Vietnamese man that was shot dead in his chevrolet pick up truckand suspected they had something to do with it. The irony in this is the fact that the vehicle is an "American car". "I find a detail like that especially moving, that this man was killed in a Chevrolet, which I understand is an American thing" (238).
Ho is restless because of the fact that he fought for his people's freedom and it is something that they still don't have. The present generation want's the same thing so you can tell both narratives want freedom, civil rights and independence for the Vietnamese people.