At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Kien never understood his father. Kien also states that he comprehends “why his mother had left his father and come to live with this wise, kind-hearted man.” (Ninh, 59). It appears that Kien does not respect his father as his culture dictates. However, he tells a story of life with his father before the war in which the reader learns that while he does not understand his father, Kien respects him and takes care of him. “Whenever he went into his father’s attic studio Kien’s heart ached and he choked with compassion…. Twice a day Kien would bring frugal meals to his father…”(Ninh, 124). Kien may not have a close father-son relationship with his father, but he still takes care of his father, as a son should do. It is not until he struggles to organize his chaotic life after the war that Kien understands his father. “Only now, in his middle age, could Kien truly understand those years.”(Ninh, 124).
Proper burial of …
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…eased soldier, Tung, whom Kien has forgotten. “ ‘Maybe it was Tung. What do you think, Kien?’ ‘Tung who?’ asked Kien. ‘Crazy Tung. The guardsman, don’t you remember?’” (Ninh, 97). Yet, after the war, Kien cannot quit remembering all that died. “He mistook her first for a jungle girl named Hoa…Then, horribly, for a naked girl at Saigon airport on 30 April 1975.” (Ninh, 113). Kien returned to his pre-war culture of remembering the dead.
The thirty years the Vietnamese spent fighting the war destroyed the value system of Vietnam culture. The war devastated the country, villages, and families. After the war, the Vietnamese began reconstructing their way of life. The character of Kien, in The Sorrow of War, shows the plight of the people of Vietnam before, during, and after the Vietnam War.
Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time
In Woman on the Edge of Time, Piercy uses language to create the idea of a climb toward knowledge and the discovery of an unknown truth that will save the present. With the help of Luciente, Connie will rise up from the dystopia, New York, to the utopia, Mattapoisett. Piercy continually alludes traveling north or ascending. “Mariana had been uprooted from a village near Namiquipa, Los Calcinados, and migrated with her family to Texas to work in the fields…When Connie was seven, they moved to Chicago…” (Piercy, 37). Ironically, this ascent toward knowledge and the future is not forward, nor is it linear. Rather, it is circular and backward. Piercy uses the names of her characters as well as the “common” language of Mattapoisett to examine the direction of the future.
Names are emphasized and are of great importance to the novel. Names like Luciente and Orion create a heavenly or cosmic tone of the novel. Luciente is Connie’s guide from the future. She is the light that leads Connie through her ascent to the future. “…