English 1A: First college essay

The Uses of Guilt: Cognitions of Life in Catfish and Mandal


Guilt is the poison of our minds, searing through us with acid pain, reminding us that we are alive. In Catfish and Mandala, Andrew Pham feels the terrible burden of guilt his entire life, and the combination of this kind of guilt and a broken heart over losing not just one but two women he loves are what lead him to his fateful journey from Mexico to Vietnam. He begins this journey as a way to atone for not being able to save those he loved, and ends it with the understanding that his guilt is his savior. The turning point in Pham’s life is the realization of Trieu’s weakness and vulnerability towards her abusive biological father which catapults him into a desperate search for salvation from the guilt he feels for his inability to save Trieu as he was unable to save Chi, the Beggar Girl or Kim the taxi dancer.

Trieu, Pham’s longtime girlfriend, had recently moved in with the biological father who had given her up at birth, so that she could discover her roots and find her identity. This was the eternal struggle of all Vietnamese Americans including Pham, to understand one’s identity and where one belongs. “…Trieu found her biological father to be something of a barbarian. But she never said a word….to get to know her roots-him” (Pg. 269) Pham was disgusted by Treu’s father and how he used her for his own ends; to marry her off to some rich American and then sponge off her for the rest of his life. He felt Trieu was too good for her father, above him, and didn’t understand why she didn’t see it too. He even envied Trieu thinking, “She was Vietnamese and American in all the right measures, something I had aspired to without knowing.” (270) She was the standard Pham aspired to, and he needed to believe in her perfection.

Pham’s life begins to deteriorate more and more as the day goes on. He has no idea, but there’s a storm coming for him that’s about to destroy everything he thought he wanted and leave him with a mess of misery, guilt, and confusion. He came to Trieu’s room at night and with the words, “Dad touched me in the car today.” (pg. 274) his whole world fell apart. He felt the anger surging through him, his father’s anger, his grandfather’s anger, swimming uncontrollably through his veins. He couldn’t understand how casual she was, how she could pretend it was nothing. “She had been through an adoption gone terribly wrong only to find a worse truth.”(pg.275) Pham knew Trieu was vulnerable to her father, and he couldn’t grasp her situation. Trieu’s need to have a father above all else was something Pham couldn’t understand or be a part of. It reminded him too much of his own need to be American above all else. “I needed to be away from the twisted vestiges of Vietnam-America….(pg. 277) Pham’s guilt over not knowing or being able to save Trieu from her father, from America, or from herself, made him question his own identity, his role in this world.

While Pham dealt with the loss of Trieu his sister Chi was wasting away. Through her depression over losing her job and her wife she sunk deeper and deeper into a hole
that no one could or would get her out of. Her family ignored her depression for the most part, thinking she would get over it, because that is what Vietnamese people do, they
survive. Chi lived with her family only as a guest, they never asked her any real questions about her years as a runaway or what she was going through, mostly because they just
didn’t want to know. It was easier that way. Chi had become a man, Minh, and his family tried to pretend that that was just the way it had always been, that they weren’t bothered or confused by it, but of course they were. “…all the signs of his imminent suicide were there in front of us, but we chose to ignore them.” (pg. 299) He hanged himself with a yellow rope, with no one in his life to give him real love or understanding. “And his family, who could not love him while he lived, grieved his passing.” (pg. 299)

Pham might not have known Minh was going to kill himself, but he should have been there for the end of his sister’s life. Instead he was too busy, too wrapped up in his own life, to notice or to care. “It was my season of unraveling. And his as well.” (pg.334) Pham was so distracted and devastated by what happened with Trieu, that he didn’t even notice his own sister’s desperate need for love. From the moment Pham and his family lost Minh as a runaway she was gone forever, never to truly be with them again. She had been fated to end her life, and Pham couldn’t understand why Minh had been the sacrifice and not him, why he had the luck and not others. Losing Trieu and then Minh in one fell scoop, not being able to save either one, was too much for Pham. He needed to relieve the guilt from his conscience, this heavy crushing weight, and he needed to find out who he truly was, for himself, for Trieu, and for Minh. He decided the best way to start searching for who you truly are is traveling the world on a bicycle, his real destination being Vietnam.

While Pham was in Vietnam, he discovered more and more about himself and about this strange country he wanted so desperately to understand, to love. This was the land of his birth, the land of his ancestors, what should have been his home, but he felt no more welcome here than in America. He strove to make connections, to understand the misfortunes and lives of these unlucky people who had not had the means to escape Vietnam like he did. Pham felt it was necessary to come to terms with his own guilt towards being the one who left his home country for better things. He wanted to discover what it meant to be Vietnamese so that he could understand himself, understand Trieu, and also understand Minh.

The longer Pham was in Vietnam, the more he understood its people, and didn’t understand them at the same time. His terrible need to make a connection with these people weighed on him and added to his guilt for not truly being Vietnamese or American, for not belonging to either side like Trieu didn’t belong, but only pretending. When he met Beggar Girl his heart broke for her pitifulness, her desperation, her terrible poverty. “She looked back, an exact image-a younger image of Trieu.” (pg.106) Beggar Girl touched something in him that had long laid dormant. He felt like a human being who had finally made an emotional connection to another Vietnamese person, because had fate been reversed, he could be where she was now, as could Trieu. “I was her. She, me. She was Trieu….Random. My world-her world.”(pg.107) Pham felt that he needed to understand these connections, the reasons behind why some fates are fortunate and others are not. He needed for there to be a way for him to save these people,
because if he didn’t save them, or couldn’t, then it would be failing like he had failed Trieu, like he had failed himself by not being the great man she thought he was.

When Pham meets Kim the taxi dancer it is as if he has another chance with Trieu, a chance to make things right. Through her, he wants to understand the life of a victimized Vietnamese woman, as if understanding her will somehow make up for not understanding Trieu. Kim traded sex for money like Trieu traded her identity for her father’s affection. Pham thought that if he understood Kim he would understand Trieu, and he thought that if he found his own identity, it would be like giving Trieu back hers. When the moment came for Pham to tell Kim he loved her he said, “I’ve left everyone I’ve loved. I’ve failed people I loved.”(pg.134) Failing Trieu made him feel that he was incapable of truly loving anyone, that his inability to be the man she thought he was proved that he couldn’t put another human being above himself. Kim said to Pham, “I don’t want to stay here in Vietnam. Take me to America.”(pg.134) Pham told her he couldn’t take her to America, and he realized that Kim changed him by making him understand that taking her to supplementing his guilt over not saving Trieu by saving Kim, and that would be unfair. He couldn’t save everyone, he could only try his best for the people he loved.

The turning point in Pham’s life was when he realized that he couldn’t save Trieu from her weaknesses, and his guilt over that made him feel he could save no one. Trieu changed him in that she led him to realize that his guilt was his humanity, and that the true goodness in his soul came from that humanity. He realized at the end of his journey that he could only do his best in this life, and that any regrets or guilt he had were only what he should feel, what he had to feel. Everyone feels guilt, and in truth it iswhat saves us and makes us know we are human. “…Past wrongs can be mended with the totality of …regrets, a pure desire that things might have been different…”(pg.339) With the ending of Pham’s journey he finds what he has been looking, which is how to survive while understanding others, understanding himself, and feeling the regret of all his past mistakes. He knows that all he can do in this life is move forward with the intention of living his life while being true to who he is, and carrying his regrets with him like badges of honor, always reminding him that he is alive.