Rain Against Glass: The Objective Correlative in Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City”

Abstract

This paper examines how Ocean Vuong’s poem “Aubade with Burning City” utilizes the literary device of the objective correlative 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, the 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 postcolonial framework. The study applies 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. This research contributes to a growing body of literature on affect, memory, and formal innovation in twenty-first-century poetry.