Many refugees have a hard time learning the new country’s culture. For many it is difficult to adapt to a new culture and at the same time keep their own traditions alive. This can problematic when their children are born into a new country. These children will grow up in the new culture, and therefore are they less attached to their parents’ traditions. This can be hard on the parents who tries to keep their traditions alive. In “Crickets”, the protagonist Thieu tries to teach his son a game he played when he was young. The problem is that his son Bill is a typical American teenager, who does not care about his fathers´ culture. Bill hates it when his dad talks Vietnamese to him and he seems to be ashamed of him. Thieu’s tradition is still important to him even though he had a hard time in his home country before he came to America. The tense relationship between father and son plays an important role in Robert Olen Butlers´ short story Crickets 1922.
The crickets is the is a symbol of Thieus lonlyness in the US. There is two kind of crikets, fire and charcoal. The charcoal crickets can compares to the American “big and slow”. The Fire can compares to Thieu because the fire crikets is fast, and smart. Thieu is feeling lonely because there is no one like him, who has the same Vietnamese traditions. There is no fire crikets only Charcoal. ‘’I got back on my hands and knees and I circled the entire house and then I turned over every stone in the yard and dug around all the trees. I found probably two dozen more crickets, but they were all the same.’’ (L,2-5, P28)
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