The Sorrow Of War Analysis

Most people can understand that when a soldier comes back from war, he is not going to be the same. He has seen too much and done too much to still be the innocent boy he had been. In the novel, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, he not only puts the effect of war for soldiers, but for regular civilians as well. The novel is saying that war affects females even though they could not fight in war. The message is conveyed through female characters that have felt sorrow and emptiness during and after the war. They have to deal with losing their loved ones, using their bodies as a form of economic support, and being abused by men at war. Regular civilians had to deal with the loss of family members or friends that went to war. Lan had experienced a lot of loss due to the war. Lan told Kien, “‘What a cruel time… and so very long. The war swept away so many people’” (52). When she says this she feels her own pain, but also pain for others. She knows that there are women like her that are grieving for the loss of loved ones because of war. Throughout the war Lan lost many people and she tells Kien that he is the only one to come back. She tells

Soldiers who have been to war can become violent. After living through so much killing, can they be blamed for their violence? Yet, women who have not done anything wrong have to deal with that abuse. In the novel, there are three girls whom the soldier 's with Kien are messing around with. One day they cannot find them, but Kien finds a bra with blood. He found the men who killed them, but to make sure it was them he asked where the girls were. One of them replied with, “The girls? We sacrificed them to the Water spirit, sir… They cried and carried on like crazy” (36). In this scene those men did not seem to think it was a big deal to sacrifice three innocent girls. These girls were a part of the worst kind of violence, they were murdered as an effect of men at