The Sorrow of War: Pages 56-79 Summary & Analysis

Kien originally intended to write a novel set after the war, starting out with a story about the Remains-Gathering Team. But his writing has veered off-course, as his memories of the actual war flood in. It’s strange, though: he himself avoids reading books about the war. And yet, he can’t help but write one himself. He wishes he could write about other things, like about his upbringing and his parents. But even the subject of his father makes him sad, since he regrets how he treated his father while he was still alive, and he doesn’t remember much about his family. He does, however, vividly remember his mother’s second husband, a poet who told him before he left for war that people are put on Earth “to live, not to kill.”

As Kien remembers his stepfather (who died before Kien returned from the war), he thinks about the many people from his past. In particular, he remembers Hanh, a young woman who lived in the same apartment building as him when he was growing up. As a boy, Kien noticed how men stared at Hanh, who was incredibly beautiful. As the years went on, Kien himself was deeply engaged in his relationship with his girlfriend, Phuong, but Hanh slowly started to take notice of how handsome he had become.

When Kien was 17, Hanh asked him to help her dig a small shelter beneath her bed—war was on the horizon, and the city was constantly running air-raid drills, so Hanh wanted a way to avoid running to the nearest shelter. Kien agreed to help her, and they worked through the evening, breaking through the floor tiles and digging a chest-deep hole. During a break, Hanh gave Kien dinner and some beer. When they resumed working, Kien was a little tipsy and felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything—nor did he say anything when the power went out. In the darkness, Hanh lowered herself into the hole to see if it was deep enough. Their bodies pressed against each other, and though at first Kien resisted temptation, he soon feverishly clutched her.

Kien kissed Hanh’s neck and shoulders, but she tried to struggle away from him. When one of his shirt buttons popped off, he realized what he was doing and rushed out of the hole. Hanh asked him to stay, since she couldn’t see anything, so he hesitantly lifted her out of the hole. But then he left and went back to his room, with Hanh telling him to come back in a moment because she wanted to tell him something. He couldn’t bring himself to do that, though. He stayed in his room until late that night, at which point he crept downstairs and put his ear to Hanh’s door. Somehow, he could tell that Hanh was also pressing herself to the other side of the door, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it. 

Kien ran back upstairs. He never spoke to Hanh again. Whenever their paths crossed, he avoided her as best he could, though she always seemed eager to talk. By the time he went to war, Hanh herself had already volunteered with the Youth Brigade. He stopped by her room on his way through Hanoi when he was headed toward the frontlines, but somebody new was living there, and the hole they’d dug had been filled in and tiled over again. For years and years afterward, Kien still pondered what Hanh had wanted to tell him—he felt as if he’d lost something by running away from her that night. 

These days, Kien looks out over Hanoi and feels alone with his memories. He remembers a time after the war when spring came early, the sun shining brightly at the end of winter. As soon as winter returned, though, Phuong left him. He had loved her since childhood, and it was her memory that had sustained him through some of the worst nights of the war. For her to leave him was unbearably painful, forcing him to examine himself and realize that he had come back to her a completely different person. He was now enrolled in classes at the university, but he stopped going and started drinking heavily. 

During that false spring, Kien was walking by the lake one night when he saw a man assaulting a woman. He ran over and defended the woman, chasing off her attacker. He then realized that the woman was a “Green Coffee Girl,” the popular name for sex workers who frequented coffeehouses to meet up with clients. She was still very young—just 19—and wore somewhat dirty clothes, but she was deeply grateful to Kien, who took her back to his apartment. She wanted to repay his kindness by having sex with him, but he refused.

When the “Green Coffee Girl” got into Kien’s bed, she fell asleep almost instantly, and it was only upon waking up hours later that she realized she knew Kien, who had been in the same platoon as her older brother. Kien was the one who had delivered the news of her brother’s death. Sitting in his bedroom, his former compatriot’s sister told him about how she came to be a sex worker in Hanoi, explaining that her mother died shortly after the news of her brother’s death. Kien went around his room looking for money and anything of value, scooping up the bills and giving them to the young woman, who thanked him and said she’d never forget his kindness.

That spring, rumors of a new war began circulating. The Vietnamese had overtaken Cambodia, and now Cambodia’s Chinese allies were threatening to invade Vietnam’s northern border. Everyone around Kien was very patriotic, boasting that Vietnam was stronger than ever and that it would fare well in another war. And though Kien didn’t necessarily disagree, he knew he’d have no part in the fighting. As the country got swept up in gung-ho ideas about war once more, something started to shift inside Kien—it was a good shift, as if he had begun to find peace for the first time since the war. That same spring, he began to write his novel.