How Is Kien Portrayed In The Sorrow Of War

War affects everyone that is involved in a different way. Some people won’t be affected by it, while others will struggle for the rest of their lives. Kien; however, struggled for the rest of his life time with flashback and the haunting memories from war. The Sorrow of War portrays how war creates personal struggles for Kien through the personal stories are told in the novel. These personal struggles that Kien deals with are presented through his actions of attempting to commit suicide, his struggles with Phuong, and the loneliness that he feels daily.
Before Kien even truly enters the war with his platoon that would be on the front lines, he is already fighting a personal struggle. While trying to catch up to the troop train, Kien realizes how war is actually going to be because of the air raids and the train station. The author writes, “He raised his pistol slowly to his head, his finger on the trigger. Why did people claim that life was always better than death? It

Kien struggled with his relationship with Phuong. When Kien came home from the war and realized his beloved Phuong was long gone, he entered a dark state that he didn’t know how to deal with. Phuong leaving Kien was an effect of the war, that caused Kien to struggle. Ninh states, “He couldn’t care less that he was penniless, that he drank and smoked almost nonstop,” (Ninh 70). Kien also began to skip his classes at the university and would often wake up in the morning in a pool of his own tears (Ninh 70). When Phuong left because of the war, Kien didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t know how to handle his own emotions; He chose alcohol and cigarettes to deal with the personal struggle he was dealing with. Kien drank to the point that he couldn’t even recognize people, like the mute girl in the attic (Ninh 113). He chose to use substances to replace his love for Phuong, which was a personal