Previous
Kien (The Writer)
Phuong is the love of Kien’s life. A young woman living in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, she and Kien dated as teenagers. While everyone around her was very patriotic in the lead up to the war, Phuong remained skeptical of the violence and calamity to come. She saw herself as a free spirit who didn’t fit into the gung-ho, patriotic attitude of wartime. Because of this outlook, she connected with Kien’s father, a painter who bemoaned how everyone in Hanoi had gotten swept up in the war. Phuong understood Kien’s father and even watched him burn his paintings shortly before he took his own life—an experience she didn’t talk about until the last night before Kien left for training, when they were lying on the banks of a lake. She wanted to have sex on this night, but Kien was too nervous. Still, Phuong tried to point out that they might not have another chance, revealing her early grasp of just how much the Vietnam War would divert their paths in life. Later, Phuong ended up riding with Kien on a freight train toward the frontlines during an air raid. In the chaos of the bombs, she and Kien got separated, at which point a group of men surrounded Phuong and took turns raping her. By the time Kien found her, she was with a large man who wanted her to stay with him, forcing Kien to beat him with a pipe. The entire ordeal put a strain on Phuong and Kien’s relationship, though they still thought of each other quite often in the ensuing 10 years of the war. To support herself, Phuong made money as a sex worker while Kien was gone—something Kien had a hard time accepting upon his return. In the end, Phuong left Kien after trying to rekindle their relationship in the postwar years. In her absence, Kien tried to find happiness in the happy memories they shared before the war.
Phuong Quotes in The Sorrow of War
The The Sorrow of War quotes below are all either spoken by Phuong or refer to Phuong. 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 116-146
Quotes
“There’s no other night like this. You’re offering your life for a cause so I’ve decided to waste mine too. This year we’re both seventeen. Let’s plan to meet each other again somewhere at some future point. See if we still love each other as much as we do now.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
But at the last moment, as he was about to press the trigger with the gun aimed directly at them, he gave them a reprieve.
It was not because of their pleading, nor because of prompting from his colleagues. No, it was because Phuong’s words had come to him like an inner voice: “So, you’ll kill lots of men? That’ll make you a hero, I suppose?”
“[…] It’s over. We deserved to have had a happy life together, but events conspired against us. You know that. You know the circumstances as well as I do. Let’s go our own separate ways from now on. Forever. It’s the only way.”
Pages 146-200
Quotes
And so their intimate nonsense had continued for the next hour, a period of delirious romantic joy in extraordinary circumstances.
He suddenly remembered what he thought he had seen in the freight car and what could still be happening there. He was to remember that as his first war wound, […].
It was from that moment, when Phuong was violently taken from him, that the bloodshed truly began and his life entered into bloody suffering and failure. And he would understand true sacrifice: friends who would die to save others.
Pages 200-224
Quotes
“Why didn’t you tell me you were injured? Sit down, sit down. We’ll bandage it. Does it hurt?”
Phuong shook her head, No.
“Sit down. I’ll make some bandages from my shirt.”
“No!” she cried, pushing him away. “Can’t you see? It’s not a wound! It can’t be bandaged!”
What was going on? He knew so little!
Pages 224-228
Quotes
Several years later, on a night when he was deep in desperation, Kien dreamed that his life had been transformed into a river stretching before him. He saw himself floating towards his death. Then at the very last moment, when he was about to go over the edge, he heard Phuong’s call echoing from that bitter dusk of the marsh near the school. It was the final call of his first love. Though they hadn’t had a happy life together or moved towards a glowing future, their first love had not been in vain. They were back there in the past together, and nothing could change or rob them of that.
Get the entire The Sorrow of War LitChart as a printable PDF.
Phuong Quotes in The Sorrow of War
The The Sorrow of War quotes below are all either spoken by Phuong or refer to Phuong. 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 116-146
Quotes
“There’s no other night like this. You’re offering your life for a cause so I’ve decided to waste mine too. This year we’re both seventeen. Let’s plan to meet each other again somewhere at some future point. See if we still love each other as much as we do now.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
But at the last moment, as he was about to press the trigger with the gun aimed directly at them, he gave them a reprieve.
It was not because of their pleading, nor because of prompting from his colleagues. No, it was because Phuong’s words had come to him like an inner voice: “So, you’ll kill lots of men? That’ll make you a hero, I suppose?”
“[…] It’s over. We deserved to have had a happy life together, but events conspired against us. You know that. You know the circumstances as well as I do. Let’s go our own separate ways from now on. Forever. It’s the only way.”
Pages 146-200
Quotes
And so their intimate nonsense had continued for the next hour, a period of delirious romantic joy in extraordinary circumstances.
He suddenly remembered what he thought he had seen in the freight car and what could still be happening there. He was to remember that as his first war wound, […].
It was from that moment, when Phuong was violently taken from him, that the bloodshed truly began and his life entered into bloody suffering and failure. And he would understand true sacrifice: friends who would die to save others.
Pages 200-224
Quotes
“Why didn’t you tell me you were injured? Sit down, sit down. We’ll bandage it. Does it hurt?”
Phuong shook her head, No.
“Sit down. I’ll make some bandages from my shirt.”
“No!” she cried, pushing him away. “Can’t you see? It’s not a wound! It can’t be bandaged!”
What was going on? He knew so little!
Pages 224-228
Quotes
Several years later, on a night when he was deep in desperation, Kien dreamed that his life had been transformed into a river stretching before him. He saw himself floating towards his death. Then at the very last moment, when he was about to go over the edge, he heard Phuong’s call echoing from that bitter dusk of the marsh near the school. It was the final call of his first love. Though they hadn’t had a happy life together or moved towards a glowing future, their first love had not been in vain. They were back there in the past together, and nothing could change or rob them of that.
