Across the Ruins: The objective correlative in Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City”

Abstract

Modern poetry often reinterprets classical literary theories to address historical trauma, identity, and collective memory. This paper examines how Ocean Vuong’s poem “Aubade with Burning City” utilizes the objective correlative literary device to convey emotional and historical trauma. Drawing on T.S. Eliot’s theory, which argues that emotion is best expressed through a set of symbolic objects and images rather than direct statement, this research analyzes Vuong’s imagery—snowfall in Saigon, the sound of “White Christmas,” and the motif of a burning city—as emotionally charged corollaries to love, war, and loss. By blending personal memory with national catastrophe, Vuong expands the objective correlative beyond Eliot’s original conception, situating it within a transnational and post-colonial framework. The study employs a close reading approach alongside insights from trauma theory and modernist criticism to demonstrate how Vuong’s sensory and formal techniques engage the reader in an embodied experience of dislocation and remembrance. Ultimately, the paper argues that Vuong reinvents the objective correlative to reflect the complexities of diasporic identity and collective memory, offering a powerful model for how contemporary poetry can ethically represent trauma.

Keywords

Poetry / Objectivity / Objective correlative / Identity / Trauma

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