The Sorrow of War

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Kien laments the fact that war means an altering of morality, an inversion of what being a good person is supposed to bring about. Oanh was good in that he let the woman he was supposed to kill go, but he was not rewarded for this; rather, he was killed for being "sympathetic." If a person in war wants to give in to their natural impulse of mercy, they may very well be rewarded for it with death. War suppresses all human sentiment of compassion and grace, rendering people automata. The discontent on his return was his inability to overcome the inner hollowness of his life. Unable to connect any of the threads to his prewar life, he was adrift in the realities of postwar Vietnam. The protagonist in The Sorrow of War, Kien, wanted something more. He faltered in his attempts. Another veteran speaks of their dilemma. The very characteristics of his spirit, his eccentricities, his free-flying artistic expressions and disregard for normal rules that annoyed others, were what attracted Phuong to him; she was a kindred soul. Narrator, 129 I have read some literature written by my former enemies. At the top of my personal list of favorites is Bảo Ninh’s The Sorrow of War .

I do not mean to make this a discussion of the physical hardships of war. The internal damages last so much longer. It does lead to another observation. While the most profound aspects of The Sorrow of War delve into the psychological universals experienced in war, the Vietnamese troops were immersed in a flora familiar to them. They not only knew the culture and language of the villages, they knew the jungle. His whole life from beginning, from childhood to the army, seemed detached and apart from him, floating in a void. Narrator, 16I’m simply a soldier like you who’ll now have to live with broken dreams and with pain. But, my friend, our era is finished. After this hard-won victory fighters like you, Kien, will never be normal again. You won’t even speak in your normal voice, in the normal way again.” Though Kien and his father have a lot in common, so do Phuong and his father. As Kien says he realized later, the two had a lot in common and were rendered either problematic or extraneous in the days of the ascendancy of Marxist rhetoric and the war itself. Free, artistic, eccentric souls, Phuong and Kien's father did not want to conform to what North Vietnam wanted of them. They did not care for war, nor ideology, nor dedicating their lives to sloughing off imperialism; rather, they wished to indulge in creativity, beauty, independence, and authenticity. Sadly, neither of them was able to live that life for themselves, which is a commentary Bao Ninh subtly offers on the oftentimes deadening nature of ideological adherence. Victory was meaningless without reconciling the sorrow of war with Kien’s life going forward. The memories would not allow it as they dominated his conscious mind and took over the imagery of his dreams. Kien isn't impressed by Communist Party leaders, either refusing to mention them at all or evincing his frustration that they want to send people off to die again in a war against Pol Pot. He saves his praise for quiet, ordinary men and women who sacrifice everything to fight. Most of them are peasants, and they will reap few rewards if they survive the war. Their needs and views weren't taken into account in the first place, Kien notes, and certainly, now that victory is secured, it isn't necessary to consult them. And that second's hesitation was paid for with the life of the only other scout still alive in his unit. Narrator, 180

From a psychological perspective, The Sorrow of War explores the ramifications of living with the consequences of war, the PTSD, survivor’s guilt and moral injury. Some families lost every son to the war; villages were depleted of their youth. Daughters were not spared on the battlefield or in love lost. Years of separation turned permanent when men never returned. Kien could never regain or replace the lost love of a childhood sweetheart. Both are too damaged by the war. Kien explains that he's not sharing all of this for nothing; he's trying to capture the horror of war because he feels the reader will likely not understand how terrifying it really was. He shares battle stories and writes about the deaths of his loved ones and comrades, even as he hoped when he began the novel that it could be about the postwar period and not the ordeal of the war itself. The novel does prove cathartic for Kien, to some extent.

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The unnamed narrator at the end, who may be Bao Ninh in some capacity, says he and Kien have the same sorrow and the same fate, yet while the narrator has found a way to live in the present, Kien has found a way to live in the past. This is not a criticism or a commentary on any "weakness" of Kien's that he cannot stay in the present or hope for the future; rather it is a commendation that Kien has embraced the memories of before the war in a way that embraces that recognizes painful experiences as nurturing, sustaining, and valuable.