The National Assembly building in Saigon is a former opera house repurposed as the seat of national politics. In the evacuation-night scene, its imposing façade and place in the city’s civic landscape frame a sharp contrast: politicians conduct the business of the country inside, while military coups and political violence have repeatedly exposed the fragility of the state they govern.

Setting and Arrival

As the General’s bus travels toward the airport, he turns away from the expected route and takes the passengers through the city during a twenty-four-hour curfew, declared after an attack on the airport. The streets are largely empty, and the narrator sees the uniforms of deserters abandoned on the sidewalks. After passing the central market, the bus turns onto Le Loi and stops at the square before the National Assembly building. The arrival makes the building a pause in an urgent journey, not a destination in itself.

Architecture and Political Theater

The building’s Grecian façade gives the former opera house the appearance of an imposing civic monument. The narrator describes the politicians inside through the language of bad theater: the country’s political life becomes a shabby operetta, with civilian and military leaders cast as performers. The setting thus joins architectural grandeur to a bitterly comic view of governance. The facade represents the official dignity of the state even as the scene calls attention to the disorder behind that appearance.

The Monument and the Building

After leaving the bus, the General turns away from the National Assembly and toward a military monument on the grassy median of Le Loi. The narrator wishes he had his Kodak at hand to photograph the General saluting its two advancing marines, one of whom is depicted in a deliberately undignified pose. Bon and the other men on the bus also salute. The narrator considers the monument’s ambiguous image: its marines might be imagined as protecting people in the street, or as attacking the assembly toward which their guns point. The nearby legislature and the monument therefore present competing, unstable images of authority and protection.

Political Memory and Significance

The salute becomes more than a response to the monument. The narrator recalls that the country’s own air force had bombed the presidential palace and that the army had killed the first president and his brother; he also remembers the generals’ repeated coups. Against this history, the National Assembly is not simply a place where politicians meet. Its proximity to a monument aimed toward it makes visible the conflict between the state’s civic institutions and the armed forces that have repeatedly threatened or overturned political authority. The narrator’s response combines despair, anger, and humor, and he renews his revolutionary vows: the building’s presence in the scene helps turn the city’s political absurdity into a judgment on the state itself.