The Mute Girl Character Analysis

The “mute girl” is how the novel refers to a woman who lives in Kien’s apartment building in Hanoi and who doesn’t speak. (It’s worth noting that “mute” is no longer an accepted term for nonspeaking people.) As Kien writes his novel in the years after the Vietnam War, he often seeks out the company of the “mute girl.” When he finishes writing late into the night, for instance, he will drunkenly find her so that he can speak aloud whatever story he has just written, apparently feeling some kind of cathartic release simply by confiding in someone else. The novel implies that the “mute girl” is deaf but that she can read lips, so she seems to understand the vast majority of Kien’s stories. When Kien finishes his novel, he decides to burn it (just like his father burned his paintings), but the “mute girl” stops him. Later, she and Kien finally have sex, but Kien leaves before dawn and never returns to the apartment. The “mute girl” understands that he has left his apartment for her, and she keeps his stack of pages safe until eventually giving them to a former soldier who compiles them into a book.