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
The only person who has read Kien’s novel manuscript is a woman referred to only as “the mute girl.” She doesn’t speak, and she moved into Kien’s building a few years before the war ended, living in the attic where his father used to paint. Kien has written about her, explaining that she slowly began to realize that he and Phuong used to be in love but that their relationship ended. One night, Kien drunkenly knocked on “the mute girl’s” door. She had been expecting him to come around at some point, since it was obvious he was interested in her, though not necessarily in a sexual way. He began pacing the room and talking to her, saying that he put her in his novel because for some reason her presence helped him remember things.
Kien’s interest in “the mute girl” seems to stem from the fact that he’s desperate for some kind of outlet, or somebody he can talk to without fearing judgment (it’s implied in the novel that this woman is deaf). Liberated by the idea that he can say whatever he needs to say, Kien approaches his developing friendship with “the mute girl” as a somewhat therapeutic bond that ultimately helps him cope with everything he has been through.
Themes
Kien developed a habit of visiting “the mute girl” in the attic on a regular basis. He would write as much as he could—drinking all the while—and then head upstairs to speak the story aloud to her. She couldn’t hear him, but she read his lips and knew the stories he was repeating were terrifying and brutal. But she wanted to be there for him in this way, and he seemed to cling to her presence. She even fell in love with Kien, though he was always at an emotional remove—he mistook her for Phuong, for Hien, for Hoa (a woman he knew in the Jungle of Screaming Souls), and even for the corpse from the Saigon airport.
It's quite clear that Kien is in a troubled state of mind, given that he mistakes “the mute girl” for women from his own past, including the corpse of a South Vietnamese soldier he didn’t actually even know. All the same, though, he finds “the mute girl’s” presence soothing, as if her inability to verbally respond to his stories gives him space to finally process them. In a way, then, talking to her becomes part of his writing process—which, in turn, is his way of dealing with the terrible things he has seen and done.
Themes
As Kien approached the end of his novel, he spoke to “the mute girl” about how he didn’t know what to do with it. He hadn’t written it to be published; he had composed it simply for the process of writing it. One night, she went to his room during a city-wide power outage and found him putting the pages of his manuscript into the stove and trying to light a fire. She knew that his father had apparently burned all of his paintings before his death, but she didn’t want Kien to follow in his footsteps, so she stopped him. He was startled at first, but then he embraced her, and they held each other for a long time.
That Kien didn’t write his novel for publication underlines the fact that the novel is his way of processing his war-related trauma. He wrote the book, it seems, simply to give voice to both the terrible and happy memories swirling inside him. The act of writing, then, is more important to him than the end result, which is perhaps why he tries to burn the pages, maybe hoping that doing so will bring him a sense of emotional closure.
Themes
“The mute girl” fell asleep at some point, and Kien snuck out of the building. He never came back. It was clear to the woman that he had left his apartment for her. Alone, she gathered the pages of his novel and stacked them on the desk, where they remained for years.
Having finished his novel, Kien is apparently capable of finally moving on, at least in a literal sense. Instead of staying in Hanoi and continuing to live in the same building he occupied as a child, he sets out in search of a new life—or, at least, this is what readers are left to think. Regardless of where he goes, the fact remains that he has finally moved on from his old life in Hanoi, suggesting that writing the novel was a necessary step he had to take in order to process his trauma and leave behind his past.
Themes
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