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It was clearly those same friendly, simple peasant fighters who were the ones ready to bear the catastrophic consequences of this war, yet they never had a say in deciding the course of the war. Narrator, 18 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. As mentioned above, Kien's novel is not linear. He comes to write with plans that defeat him, ideas that fizzle out, and intentions that shift. He seems unable to control the novel, often personifying it to suggest its control over him. He does not really get to say what form it takes or what content is included or elided. This is not problematic, though, for this is exactly the form of writing that helps Kien start to move through his deeply troubling and complicated memories. He would never have been able to use a novel's traditional form to make sense of what he did and saw, but this sort of unconscious writing moves him through his trauma and closer to a space beyond it. The soldiers returned to the postwar hardships of life in Vietnam. The hopes of many were dashed by the devastation and the inability of their inner selves to reconcile with their current reality. The bitterness from the war did not stem from the cause. As a boy, Bảo Ninh’s family compared the arrival of the Americans with that of the French—another foreign presence in their country. As a fourteen-year-old boy, he was not so much intimidated by the American bombing of Hanoi as angered by it. His high school was moved outside of the city. It was a motivating factor in going to war at seventeen. 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, 129My two brothers, my classmates, and my husband, too, were all younger than you, and joined up years later than you. But none of them has returned. From so many, there is only you left, Kien. Just you." Lan, 53 I never succumbed to the fabrication of some Americans that “life didn’t mean as much to the Vietnamese.” I treated too many civilian war casualties not to see their agony. The Sorrow of War gives a glimpse into the soul of a North Vietnamese soldier. It is not so different from my own. 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.

And that second's hesitation was paid for with the life of the only other scout still alive in his unit. Narrator, 180As a writer, Ninh captures the essence of the emptiness and loneliness of returning and the inability to reconstruct the joys of one’s past before the war. Far more is lost than the innocence of youth. His whole life from beginning, from childhood to the army, seemed detached and apart from him, floating in a void. Narrator, 16 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. In later years Kien experienced…long periods of withdrawal. Like the dead, one felt no fear, no enthusiasm, no joy, no sadness, no feelings for anything. No concerns and no hopes. One was totally devoid of feeling, and had no regard for the clever or the stupid, the brave or the cowardly, commanders or privates, friend or foe, life or death, happiness or sadness. It was all the same; it amounted to nothing.”