How does Robert Olen Butler use imagery in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain?

Butler makes use of a number of images and symbols in the story. Dao readily explains some of them. The murdered newsman had become Americanized. This is clear to Daombecause the man had chosen to purchase a Chevrolet pickup truck; a Chevrolet "is a strongly American thing," and the pickup truck made him "also a man of Louisiana, where there are many pickup trucks." The newsman chose not to "purchase a gun rack for the back window, another sign of this place," which ironically might have saved him by blocking the assassin's bullet. Dao's musings on this topic show the gun's power as both a peacekeeping object and an object of extreme violence, reflecting on its role in the wars of Vietnam.

Clothing also symbolizes different things. When Ho comes to Dao at night, he is
dressed in "the dark clothes of a peasant and the rubber sandals, just like in the news pictures." But when Ho tried to get a meeting with the European and American leaders at Versailles, he took on their appearance, renting a dark suit and a bowler. Ho further evokes the image of young Vietnamese nationalists taking on the costume of the Western world in their effort to gain the West's respect and support. In Ho's afterlife are "a million souls . . . the young men of our country, and they are all dressed in black suits and bowler hats."