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Hien
In the last year of the war, Can was one of the soldiers in Kien’s platoon. A sensitive person, Can was terribly impacted by all the horror he’d seen throughout his years of combat—so impacted, in fact, that he decided to leave the army and become a deserter, which was punishable by execution. He told his plans to Kien right before leaving, trusting that Kien wouldn’t stop him or tell the higher-ups when he left. Kien tried to dissuade him, but it was no use. Army officials found Can several days later; he hadn’t gotten very far, but he was already dead. Nobody knows how, exactly, he died, and though everyone quickly forgot about him, Kien still sometimes thinks about him and how profoundly the war troubled him.
Can Quotes in The Sorrow of War
The The Sorrow of War quotes below are all either spoken by Can or refer to Can. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Pages 8-26
Quotes
The name, age, and image of someone who’d been every bit as brave under fire as his comrades, who had set a fine example, suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Except within the mind of Kien. Can’s image haunted him every night, returning during the night to whisper to him by his hammock, repeating the final, gloomy lines he’d spoken by the stream. The whisper would turn into a suffocating gasp, like the sound of water blocking the throat of a drowning man.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Can Quotes in The Sorrow of War
The The Sorrow of War quotes below are all either spoken by Can or refer to Can. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Pages 8-26
Quotes
The name, age, and image of someone who’d been every bit as brave under fire as his comrades, who had set a fine example, suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Except within the mind of Kien. Can’s image haunted him every night, returning during the night to whisper to him by his hammock, repeating the final, gloomy lines he’d spoken by the stream. The whisper would turn into a suffocating gasp, like the sound of water blocking the throat of a drowning man.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
