Title: The Loss and Reconstruction of the Innocent American National Identity in the Post-Vietnam Era in Tree of Smoke

Abstract: Tree of Smoke, a Vietnam War novel by the contemporary American novelist Denis Johnson, is a representation of the Americans’ consideration of and longing for the innocent national identity after the Vietnam War. Firstly, the novel depicts the Americans’ loss of innocence in the Vietnam War, and the confusion after the deconstruction of the innocent national identity. Secondly, the Vietnamese, with their disclosure of the war as a colonial war, and their adherence to cultural uniqueness, are not the others contributing to the innocence myth, therefore destructing the cultural hierarchy between Americans and the non-whites in the myth. Thirdly, the novel casts doubt on whether the innocent national identity can be reconstructed by accepting Vietnamese refugees as immigrants after the war, and instead lays hope upon Operation Babylift and transnational adoptions. Therefore, with the substitution of memories of war violence with humanitarian rescues, this novel expresses Johnson’s longing for the innocent American national identity and is also engaged in the post-war American efforts to assimilate the war into the national identity.

Keywords: Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke, myth of innocence, national identity

Author: Jingwen Xu, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages (School of International Education), Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan, Shandong, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.02.008