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The Tax Collector
The daughter of the General and Madame. She was a tomboy growing up and an excellent student. Her talent in scholastics led to her getting a scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Her parents initially refused to let her attend, due to their belief that the school was “a communist colony.” For each time that they refused, she attempted suicide—first by swallowing a fistful of pills and then by jumping into the Saigon River. When her parents concede, she flies to California in the fall of 1972 to begin her studies in Art History. She graduates from Berkeley, cum laude. Her parents are scandalized when she returns to Vietnam, dressed in bell bottoms and tight-fitting tops. She expresses a desire to become a singer. The narrator sees her again, for the first time since she was a school girl, when she performs as a back-up singer at a wedding. She moves to Brentwood, a wealthy enclave of Los Angeles, and works in an art gallery while continuing to pursue her singing ambitions. She is politically progressive and has had numerous boyfriends. While the narrator thinks that she has talent as a performer, her parents detest her sexually suggestive behavior on- and off-stage. The narrator is very attracted to her and they have one sexual encounter on the night that he kills Sonny.
Lan (“Lana”) Quotes in The Sympathizer
The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by Lan (“Lana”) or refer to Lan (“Lana”). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
Bang bang was the sound of memory's pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon […] men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds […] the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one's shirt by afternoon the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations […] the hills afire with sunset […] the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Lan (“Lana”) Quotes in The Sympathizer
The The Sympathizer quotes below are all either spoken by Lan (“Lana”) or refer to Lan (“Lana”). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
Bang bang was the sound of memory's pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon […] men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds […] the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one's shirt by afternoon the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations […] the hills afire with sunset […] the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
