Previous
Pages 56-79
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sorrow of War, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Trauma, and Moving On
Love in Times of Hardship
Coping Through Writing
Patriotism, Sacrifice, and Skepticism
Summary
Analysis
Kien recalls the train he took back to Hanoi after the North won the war. The train took three days and was full of soldiers, but there wasn’t much fanfare. Kien and the others expected there to be big celebrations as the train passed, but that wasn’t the case—the civilians and authorities didn’t seem to care much about the passing veterans. Plus, so many of the soldiers were wounded and in rough shape. When they passed through train stations, loudspeakers blared messages warning the soldiers about getting too comfortable with southerners, urging them to be wary of the “spirit of reconciliation.”
In the lead-up to the war, Kien was inundated with patriotic messages about how glorious victory would be and how much the country would change if the North took control. And yet, returning from winning the war isn’t what he imagined: there’s no grand celebration or prevailing sense of change. In fact, Northern authorities even warn the soldiers about embracing the “spirit of reconciliation,” thus implying that there’s still quite a bit of animosity at play in Vietnam. Winning the war, then, clearly hasn’t instantly changed the country, leading Kien to question what it was all for.
Themes
Still, Kien found some solace while riding the train back to Hanoi. He grew close with a young woman named Hien, who had fought on battlefields in South Vietnam. She’d been wounded in battle, so each night on the train Kien would carry her to his hammock so she could sleep soundly. They would lie next to each other and sway all night in the hammock, occasionally kissing and hugging. When they reached Hien’s stop, Kien wanted to get off the train with her and see her home, but she told him to stay, saying that he needed to go home and see if there was anyone waiting for him. With regret, he watched her walk slowly down the road on her crutches.
The novel has already emphasized the fact that love and romance can blossom in even the most unlikely circumstances, like when Kien’s fellow soldiers fell in love with the three farm women in the Jungle of Screaming Souls. It’s quite fitting, then, that Kien spends his last few days as a soldier in a state of romantic passion with Hien. And yet, their relationship is fleeting, as Hien insists that they must return to their separate lives, making it clear that moments of romantic bliss should never be taken for granted, since they’re liable to come to a quick end.
Themes
When Kien finally reached Hanoi and went to his old building, it looked as if nobody lived there. And yet, there was a light shining on the third floor. He went up to his old apartment and saw that his father’s name was still on the door. Just as he was about to open it, he heard a door open down the hall and heard his name—it was Phuong. He couldn’t believe his ears. He turned around and went to her, kissing her and hugging her for the first time in 10 years. It was a moment he would never forget.
Kien’s memories of his prewar relationship with Phuong helped him through some of the worst moments of the war. Now, he has the pleasure of finally reuniting with her—something he might not have even known would be possible, since so many years have passed since he last saw her. Therefore, this reunification most likely feels like an unexpectedly happy ending to the war, even if he and Phuong will later face challenges in their efforts to rekindle what they once had.
Themes
Kien mumbled about how Phuong’s memory had stayed with him throughout the years, and Phuong herself assured him that now they’d be together forever. But then something intruded on their intimacy—Kien had a creeping sense of unease, and though he wasn’t sure at first what it was, he soon realized he was unsettled because there was a third person in the hall. It was a man, and he was standing behind Phuong. However, Phuong was undeterred, unbuttoning her shirt to reveal a key to Kien’s apartment hanging around her neck. They moved to go inside, but just as they were about to embrace once more, Kien realized Phuong had been with another man before he arrived. Furious, he pulled his bag into the apartment and firmly shut the door on Phuong.
It's not necessarily surprising that Kien is upset to learn that Phuong was with another man when he returned, but it’s also not very surprising that Phuong would seek out other lovers in Kien’s absence. After all, it has been more than a decade since Kien last left; it’s not even clear whether or not Phuong knew he was still alive. And though she has clearly allowed herself to strike up new relationships, she also wears the key to Kien’s apartment around her neck, which is a pretty good indication that she still feels very strongly for him.
Themes
Get the entire The Sorrow of War LitChart as a printable PDF.
Pacing in his room, Kien thought angrily about how his suffering in the war had been repaid by still more suffering at home. The only way he’d gotten through some of the worst moments of the war was by fantasizing about his reunion with Phuong, and now that had been ruined by the fact that she was with another man when he returned. Later that night, Phuong came to his apartment and told him that the man she’d been living with had left. The man had asked her to marry him, but now that Kien was back, he had decided to leave.
It's evident that Phuong still loves Kien. Although the man she was just with seems to have cared deeply for her (considering that he asked her to marry him), Phuong apparently has no problem brushing him aside now that Kien has returned. But she and Kien have gotten off to a rocky start in this new chapter of their relationship, ultimately underscoring just how difficult it is for people to pick up where they left off after having gone through so much individually.
Themes
Phuong and Kien resumed their romantic relationship. In retrospect, though, Kien now knows it was destined to fail. The relationship lasted for a while but ultimately ended after Kien beat up Phuong’s ex-lover at a bar. The police who arrested him described him as a “madman,” and when he returned home, Phuong told him that they had clearly made a mistake by getting back together. She said they were each “prisoners” to their memories of their prewar life together. She also referenced a time when they were on a train that was attacked, saying that she should have died then—that way, at least, Kien would have remembered her with happiness.
The description of Kien as a violent “madman” implies that the war has fundamentally changed him. After years of fighting, he has trouble dealing with intense emotions in everyday life, ultimately flying off the handle and becoming violent in inappropriate contexts. When Phuong says that they’ve become “prisoners” to their memories, she suggests that they’ve become overly devoted to the happiness they once had. It’s clear that they no longer have this happiness, but they have tried desperately to recapture it—an endeavor Phuong now sees as futile.
Themes
One night shortly after Phuong left, Kien stood in his apartment looking out the window and reliving a number of scenes from the war. The memories tormented him, sending him pacing around the room until he finally picked up a pen and started writing them down. And then everything changed. He threw himself into the writing, and then he spent the next day wandering the city with an odd feeling of contentment, as if he had managed to regain a sense of his prewar happiness. From then on, he decided, he would plunge into the past through his writing. This would be the “new life” that the war had promised: not a new future, but a return to the past.
One of the central ideas at play in The Sorrow of War is that the past can be a refuge of sorts. Even though Kien no longer believes in the bright future that the war was supposed to bring to Vietnam, he is able to find some sense of hope by returning to his old memories—memories, that is, of his prewar life. In doing so, he is better able to process everything that happened to him during the Vietnam War, as if the mere fact that he was once happy is enough to give him strength in the present.
Themes
While working on the novel, Kien tried to recapture the many stories he’d heard throughout the years. For each soldier missing in action, he thought, there was a unique tale. For instance, many of the people working for the Remains-Gathering Team heard a ghostly song playing through the Jungle of Screaming Souls, and when they followed it, they finally found the dead soldier whose soul had been singing the tune. The man’s skeleton was lying in a shallow grave and holding a shoddy guitar. When they gave the skeleton a real burial, the song burst forth and played loudly through the jungle one last time and then was never heard again. Whether or not this is true was never clear to Kien, but the Remains-Gathering Team passed on the story until it became a legend.
There’s an emphasis on storytelling in the novel, as Kien recalls the supernatural tales many of his fellow soldiers told during and after the war. By telling such vivid ghost stories, the soldiers effectively try to make sense of their experiences, which are otherwise very overwhelming and traumatizing—so traumatizing, in fact, that it’s arguably impossible to make sense of them without turning to mysterious, supernatural interpretations.
Themes
Kien remembers a story one of his fellow soldiers told him. This soldier was involved in an intense fight with Southern commandos when suddenly American forces started firing on them and dropping bombs. The northern soldier jumped into a bomb crater and took cover, and then a Southern commando jumped into the hole for protection. The commando landed right on top of the Northern soldier, who instinctively stabbed him multiple times. He didn’t even mean to do it—it was just his impulse.
The Northern soldier in this story didn’t actively want to stab the Southerner who jumped into the same crater as him—he did it without thinking. This, the novel suggests, is what war does to people: it puts them in such frightening situations that they don’t have time to truly think about what they’re doing, instead acting on a desperate impulse to survive.
Themes
The commando had already been injured, and though the Northerner had stabbed him, he started trying to help him. As soon as the bombing stopped, the Northerner told the commando to stay in the crater, promising to go get bandages. But it started raining heavily once he left the crater, and then he couldn’t find his way back. He spent hours trying to find the commando. As he looked, though, water quickly built up in the craters. Eventually, the Northerner knew it was too late: the commando had surely already drowned. This thought haunted him for years and years to come.
Although the Northerner’s first impulse was to stab the Southern commando, he quickly comes to the Southerner’s aid, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be enemies. The entire story suggests that there can still be quite a bit of humanity on the battlefield, despite the horrific violence. And yet, it’s also very rare for soldiers to find a sense of closure after a battle, as illustrated by the Northerner’s inability to help the commando, as well as his subsequent dismay, which follows him around for the rest of his life.
Themes
Kien now knows it’s imperative not to dwell too much on thoughts about dead soldiers. And yet, he still vividly recalls the death of his first commander. It was 1966, and a nearby explosion of a bombshell struck the commander down. His intestines were spilling out of his stomach, but he was somehow still alive. Kien stayed with him, trying to bandage his legs to stop the terrible bleeding coming from wounds in his thighs. But the commander told him to stop—in fact, he pleaded with Kien to shoot him. Kien refused. Before long, another shell landed nearby and separated Kien from the commander. Before Kien could start bandaging him again, the commander grabbed a grenade and told him to run away for his own sake.
Kien’s memory of his commander’s death highlights the uncomfortable fact that sometimes showing mercy on the battlefield means putting people out of their misery. Such an action could be seen as a form of kindness, since it stops the wounded from suffering. The problem, though, is that this form of kindness still involves killing and thus it threatens to haunt the other person for the rest of their days. In that light, Kien still vividly remembers his commander begging him to kill him, and though he didn’t ultimately oblige, it’s likely that he would still be deeply scarred if he had.
Themes
To this day, Kien can still hear his commander’s crazy laughter just before detonating the grenade. Nine years later, members of the Remains-Gathering Team swore they kept hearing crazed laughter in the same vicinity of the Jungle of Screaming Souls where Kien’s commander died. Kien didn’t mention the incident at first, but other members of the team offered up similar stories that might explain the ghostly laughter. They also claimed to have seen various figures in the woods and even went to find them. But there was no way to know for sure what or who these things were, so the men formulated a story about how one of these figures was pregnant, saying that the baby would most likely live a good life—a small form of optimism that Kien saw as necessary to the soldiers’ general post-war outlook.
Again, storytelling becomes a way of making sense of otherwise frightening wartime experiences. In this case, Kien’s fellow soldiers insist on infusing their lives with a small dose of optimism by suggesting that one of the ghostly figures they’ve seen in the woods is pregnant. In this way, they use storytelling and supernatural beliefs to project their hopes for a brighter future, clinging to the idea that even good things can emerge from ugly circumstances.
Themes
