Summary
The chapter “The Boat” features a sixteen-year-old girl named Mai who escapes from Vietnam on a boat packed with other refugees. Mai’s mother gives Mai money and tells her to go on a bus where she will meet someone who her mom says is her “uncle.” Mai doesn’t realize where she is going and feels confused and unsure about the situation. When Mai arrives on the bus, her “uncle” hides her for several days until she is transferred to the boat.
Mai befriends a young mother named Quyen and her six-year-old son, Truong. The boat is uncomfortable, overcrowded with people, and reeking of human excrement. Mai feels scared about being in an unfamiliar place without her family and struggles to comprehend the finality of not being able to see her family again. The situation worsens when a storm causes the boat’s engines to break and their food and water supply to spoil. Now, the boat is no longer just uncomfortable: it’s also potentially deadly.
For the rest of Mai’s journey on the boat, she continues to struggle with losing her parents and her old life, but she is distracted by the harsh reality of her own potential demise. Mai witnesses many people die of dehydration and sickness, while she also suffers from the effects herself. She gets a fever and is delirious for a couple of days. Once she recovers, she tries to spend her time around Quyen and Troung, who bring her a sense of comfort and familiarity.
Mai is especially drawn to Troung. She initially thinks this is because he reminds her of her little brother, but then she realizes that Truong’s stoic expression reminds her of her own father.
As the journey progresses, Truong weakens, becoming feverish and still. Mai tries to help him by keeping him above deck, where there is more air and open space. Quyen suffers from delusions and is briefly angered at Mai because she doesn’t want her to take Truong from her, but Quyen then realizes that Mai is just trying to help. The two women are able to get another ration of water for Truong, but they are fearful that the remaining water is almost gone.
As the people on the boat begin to feel hopeless, they eventually spot land. Mai goes to wake Truong to tell him the good news, but she realizes he has passed away. The chapter ends with Truong’s body being thrown overboard just as the boat sails towards land.
Analysis
When reading "The Boat," readers will be reminded of Nam's internal conflict in the first story of the book, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," about whether he should continue to write "ethnic literature" (p.9) that will sell well. At one point, Nam's friend tells him that ethnic literature is boring and reassures his friend, "That's why I don't mind your work, Nam. Because you could just write about Vietnamese boat people all the time. Like in your third story" (p.10). Clearly, the friend in that story was referring to "The Boat." The fact that the friend specifies that it was the third story Nam wrote at the Iowa Writer's Workshop calls attention to the fact that Le has placed it last in this collection, perhaps to show the reader his ability to write from a variety of perspectives before including one that is closer to his own identity.
Mai’s father remains a central point of Mai’s thoughts throughout the story. She finds herself being able to relate more to the struggles that her father had faced in war and the reeducation camp while she suffers on the boat. This shows her transition from childhood to adulthood; she will have to be independent for the rest of her life if she survives the trip to a foreign country. This also parallels Le grappling with his own father's traumatic experiences in Vietnam.
Mai also parallels characters in many other stories in the collection. She is the child of a fisherman, like Jamie, and she is at a similar age to both him and Elise, which sheds light on the different experiences of adolescents based on nationality and socioeconomic status. Though she is much older than Mayako, she is perhaps the most similar to her: separated from her parents, without knowing why, during a time of national trauma.
Mai and the other boat passengers' dehydration brings out cruel ironies. The narrator states, "It was fantastic to be surrounded by so much water and yet be dehydrated" (p.251). In this case, fantastic does not mean extremely good, but rather vividly ironic. In the same paragraph the narrator notes another irony, "Some [people], desperate for drinkable water, even allowed themselves the quick amnesia and prayed for another storm" (p.251). This is ironic because a storm is what got them into this awful situation, and another storm would likely cause the death of everyone on the boat.
Truong's death is a tragic end to "The Boat," the story, as well as to The Boat, the collection. As usual, Le includes vivid, even graphic details; the final sentence of the story states, "Swinging the small body once, twice, three times before letting go, tossing him as far behind the boat as possible so he would be out of sight when the sharks attacked" (p.272). This imagery means that the reader cannot imagine a romantic version of Truong's death: rather, the reader must confront its true horror. While many deaths occur through the collection, particularly in this story, Truong's demonstrates the impact of war on innocent civilians.
