Grandfather Soul

Grandfather’s Soul
The worship of ancestors in the spirit world is an important part of Buddhist beliefs.  If ancestors are not worshipped and made a continuing part of daily life, they will just wander in the spirit world and be unable to warn of disasters in dreams (28-29).  It is the responsibility of male family members to carry out this tradition.  In “Mr. Green,” from A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, 1993 Pulitzer Prize Winning Robert Olen Butler contrasts the religious differences between the Catholic Vietnamese granddaughter with her aging Buddhist grandfather.  I believe the religious conflict between the generations is serious from grandfather’s point of view but not from the granddaughter’s.
The Vietnamese girl is Catholic, but her grandfather is a Buddhist who believes in the worship of ancestors.  She promises to pray for the ancestors in the Catholic Church, but that is not good enough for grandfather; “Not possible,” he says to her.  Religion is a sacred thing to the Vietnamese culture in this, and praying has to be done by males because they think that females cannot do it during 1970’s.  The grandfather wants her to be Buddhist because he does not want to let his granddaughter end up like her dad who leaves the spirits of his ancestors to wander in darkness.  If she and her dad neglect the souls of their ancestors, “they will become lost and lonely and will wander around in the kingdom of the dead no better off than a warrior killed by his enemy and left unburied in a rice paddy to be eaten by black birds of prey” (31-33).
Grandfather has a parrot, “Mr. Green,” who uses the phase, “Not possible” at appropriate times.  The bird has learned the phrase from grandfather, who uses it frequently when events are going against his wishes.  He says “Not possible” when the family is fleeing from North Vietnam and when the granddaughter says would pray for the ancestors in the Catholic Church.  The parrot becomes hers when the grandfather dies.  The parrot even moves to America with her, and Mr. Green reminds her of grandfather and his death everyday.  When the vet prescribes drops for Mr. Green, he says “not possible” when she tries to administer them.
The Buddhists believe that transmigration of souls means that death passes from one body to another, but the granddaughter supposes it is impossible to transmigrate into some creature that is already alive.  Yet, it does seem to happen because the grandfather transfers his soul to Mr. Green and the granddaughter feels grandfather’s presence daily.  When Mr. Green starts to cough like his previous owner then the granddaughter realizes the parrot is only copying the old man.  The vet says that the bird was mimicking something he had heard which is the coughing the old grandfather does before his death.  “She held her arms and carried Mr. Green outside to get fresh air.  Her feet were bare, like a child’s and the earth was soft and wet and I crouched there and I quickly reached to Mr. Green and grasped him at his chest, lifted him and caught him with my other hand before he could struggle” (207-209).  She kills the bird, to put it out of its misery, in the same manner as her mother taught her although the mother uses the technique when preparing birds for meals in Vietnam.  
The author uses character as an element of fiction, and he uses the grandfather who believes that Buddhists have not forgotten the spirits of his ancestors leaving them to wander around in the eternity of loneliness.  Additionally, he uses the girls, who is a Catholic like her father and who promises the grandfather that she will always pray for him and make offerings for him, but grandfather says to her that it is, “Not possible.”  Each religion has it own way of respecting ancestors as the age difference between the girl and her grandfather emphasizes the gap in the religious beliefs.  The author uses another character in the story, Mr. Green, an aging parrot who becomes old like a grandfather especially when he pulls his feathers off and his skin looks like the old grandfather’s.  The deaths of the grandfather and Mr. Green symbolize the end of the Vietnamese culture to the granddaughter and the beginning of a new American culture.
Through her Catholicism, she accepts that women can do some things that may have been reserved for men in the past.  She can honor her grandfather and uphold the family tradition of ancestor worship. But the granddaughter chose Catholicism because she doesn’t follow in her grandfather’s footstep and she wanted to get a fresh start in America. The message in the story is choose your own destiny.