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
A new narrative voice explains that the writer who penned the previous pages left his apartment without telling anyone. This new narrator is a man who lives in Hanoi and often used to see the writer walking on the streets. He explains that the writer finished writing his novel and left his apartment for good the very next day. “The mute girl” who lived in the same building had spent the night with him, but she woke to an empty bed. She didn’t know what to do with the many pages he left behind, so she put them in a stack in the attic. Eventually, she gave the pages to the new narrator, who set to work organizing them into a coherent book, though this was a difficult task because the stories were so fragmented.
This final section of the novel shifts the perspective, suggesting that all of the pages that came before this part are supposed to be the pages that make up Kien’s novel. Of course, it’s not a traditional novel, since there’s no clear chronology or even a central plot, other than Kien’s experience surviving the Vietnam War. And yet, now that the novel has drawn to a close, it’s easier to see that its central narrative revolves around Kien and Phuong’s romantic relationship and the way it was able to sustain them both through hardship even though the relationship itself was ultimately unable to survive.
Themes
The new narrator became enthralled with what the writer had created. As he read the pages, he realized he had known the writer during the war—they had traveled together for a short while on their way to the battlefront. On an even broader level, though, the narrator recognized his own story in the novel simply because the pages outlined experiences that were relatable to a soldier who had faced similar horrors. That, after all, is what the war left the survivors with: a “common sorrow.”
Although war is characterized by division and animosity, the new narrator points out that such hardship also binds people together. Although the new narrator only fleetingly knew Kien, he feels connected to him because they both underwent the horrors of war. In fact, according to the second narrator’s logic, even South Vietnamese or American soldiers would potentially be able to relate to Kien’s story, since they all faced the same terrifying experiences as soldiers—experiences that have ultimately created a “common sorrow” that transcends political allegiances and anything else that might divide people.
Themes
