On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous buffalo

Little Dog frequently employs the image of a herd of buffalo thundering over the edge of a cliff in On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, and the buffalo are symbolic of the opioid crisis that is sweeping American society both in Vuong’s novel and in the real world. While watching television, Little Dog and Lan watch a herd of buffalo follow each other directly over the edge of a cliff, falling to their death below. Lan can’t understand why the buffalo would willingly go over the edge to their death, but Little Dog tells her that they don’t know what they are doing. The buffalo are simply following their family, he says. Vuong draws a parallel between the buffalo and the thousands of Americans who die each year from drug addiction, in many cases after watching their friends and family members go out the same way.

“You don’t have to be like the buffaloes,” Little Dog says to no one in particular. “You can stop.” Little Dog implies drug addiction as a learned behavior picked up from previous generations and friends, and if others would simply learn from the actions of others rather than simply mimicking them, Little Dog argues that this vicious cycle can be broken. In another life, Little Dog hopes he and his mother, Rose, can be “the opposite of buffaloes” and instead “grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home.” Unlike the buffalo, monarch butterflies use the memories and learned experiences of their ancestors to survive. At the end of the novel, a heard of buffalo charge directly at Little Dog on their way to a cliff; however, just as the first buffalo reaches the edge, the entire herd explodes into monarch butterflies and soar off over Little Dog’s head. Through his own learned experiences and those of others, Little Dog stops himself from going over the metaphorical cliff, and he implies that others can, too, if they only acknowledge and learn from the experiences of those before them.

The Buffalo Quotes in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

The On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Buffalo. 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:

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One afternoon, while watching TV with Lan, we saw a herd of buffalo run, single file, off a cliff, a whole steaming row of them thundering off the mountain in Technicolor. "Why they die themselves like that?" she asked, mouth open. Like usual, I made something up on the spot: "They don’t mean to, Grandma. They’re just following their family. That's all. They don’t know it's a cliff,"

"Maybe they should have a stop sign then."

Page Number and Citation: 179-180

Explanation and Analysis:

The Buffalo Symbol Timeline in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Buffalo appears in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...watching television with Lan one afternoon and seeing a program in which a herd of buffalo follow each other off a cliff, falling to their death. Lan is horrified and asks... (full context)

...like a lesson, Little Dog claims, and it says: “You don’t have be like the buffaloes. You can stop.” Little Dog swallows his pills. He never did heroin with Trevor; he... (full context)

...except for the pain they have caused each other. “Maybe we’ll be the opposite of buffaloes,” Little Dog says. “We’ll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of... (full context)

...he thinks about the night before. Little Dog asked Trevor if he ever saw those buffalo on the Discovery Channel, the ones that just run off the cliffs. Trevor said yes.... (full context)

...keeps running through the field. He is trying to outrun it all, to be a buffalo, somewhere in North Dakota maybe. He is a buffalo in a massive herd, and just... (full context)

What do the monarch butterflies represent in on earth we're briefly gorgeous?

What is on earth we're briefly gorgeous poem about?

What happened to Trevor in on earth we're briefly gorgeous?

How does on Earth we're briefly gorgeous end?