56 pages • 1 hour read
Bảo NinhThe Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Pages 146-176Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 146-176 Summary
As Kien walks around Hanoi at night, he sees scenes that remind him of wartime. He sees silks that recall Khmer girls who served as scouts. He tries to imagine how pedestrians would react to him. He remembers trivia about Hanoi that he learned in the jungle. He says Hanoi suffers from the same postwar sorrow he does.
In the Balcony café, he describes postwar soldiers, like clumsy Vuong, whose memories of war cause him to drink himself to unconsciousness. He remembers fighting with a street tough who called Phuong a tramp. Leaving the café, he takes a tram driven by Huynh, whose son Kien saw die. Kien remembers Toan dying, and that he was once in love with Phuong. Thinking of the tram and Phuong reminds Kien of coming home to Hanoi after three months of training. After looking for her at his home, a friend says she is at the rail station, being evacuated from the city in fear of American bombing raids. All the lights are blacked out, and the city seems deserted. He finds Phuong at the rail station, and they travel back into town, until an air raid siren sounds and they head back for the rail station to catch Kien’s train to the front. After missing his train, he and Phuong hitch a ride south, where they hop a freight train, lying in the dark and pledging their love to one another as the train speeds south toward the front.
But Phuong is gone now, and Kien can only remember her. He remembers an event at the end of ninth form. His school class had gone camping at the beach, and a sailor tells them to put out their fire because the war with the Americans will begin soon. When Phuong asks if singing is banned too, he tells her to keep singing, that they’ll need singing for the war to come.
Pages 146-176 Analysis
Wandering the streets helps Kien’s writing because he sees the sorrow of the city. He says everything is cheap and sorrowful, but it is this sorrow that drives him, that gives his writing substance. Everywhere he goes, he sees evidence of sorrow. The tram driver’s son died near Kien. Vuong can’t drive anymore because he remembers driving over bodies. In Hanoi, even the small act of getting on a tram sends Kien into sorrow. The same is true with even walking into a café. The tough guy Kien fights at the café also fought in the war, and it was because of the war that Phuong was forced to become a tramp. Everyone is broken: the prostitute in the cafe has all broken teeth; Vuong can’t drive; the tram driver sees Kien and remembers his son. The only prosperous person is the fat café owner, who is prosperous because he sells comfort—alcohol and girls—to veteran soldiers.
Amidst the suffering, Kien once again returns to memories of Phuong before the war. He knows he will never see her again, but nonetheless recalls what he remembers as a happy time, when he was with her, before the war forced her to turn to prostitution and he saw so many die. He remembers their brief time in Hanoi after he finished training, remembering, even as they rode south to the war, how it was an adventure because she was with him. He also remembers the night they first hear of the war, when the sailor tells Phuong to sing, that they will need singing in the war to come.
Kien wants, in his memories, to hear Phuong sing again, and the only way he can is by writing it, by reliving his memories. All his memories of Phuong touch on war: the night they first heard of the war; the night before Kien left for training; and the night she accompanied him on the train south. Each time, Phuong wants to sleep with Kien, and each time he cannot. Now, he wishes he had. He wishes he had that memory stacked with the others. He is full of regret, and sorrowful. In the years after the war, the soldiers at the café look for comfort in any way they can find it; Kien looks for comfort in his memories of Phuong, in a time before the war began.
