symbolic significance supporting the writer's key themes in the Sorrow of War

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Here Kien is on his body collecting mission, putting to rest the bodies and souls of the soldiers who died fighting in the war. There is a strong presence of the spiritual realm in this passage. “Disease and successive famines had erased all life” and they “set the village alight to cleanse it.” However even after the fire “soldiers were still terrified” of the place because of the “civilian souls loose in the wood.”

From this passage the writer explores the erasable damage war causes. They can try destroying the physical evidence by burning it however the souls of all those killed in war will always haunt the area and the sorrow of war will forever be marked in the Jungle of Lost Souls.

In the line: “emitting a stink that penetrated the imagination” has symbolic significance in supporting the writer’s key themes. The “stink” symbolizes the sorrow of war. This line represents how the impact the sorrow of war can get to even the bravest of men, even those who do not believe in an afterlife. This supports the key theme of the strong spiritual force the sorrow of war has on all people.

Background reading on The Sorrow of War

Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea by Michael Pearson.

In the Vietnam chapter of the book, the author talks about his experience of the Vietnam War even though he did not participate in the physical fighting.

Even though the author was American, he still felt for what the Americans had done to Vietnam after reading The Sorrow of War. He expressed that Boa Ninh's book had a heavy impact due to the insight it gave the readers to the scaring effects the war had on the Vietnamese.

The author tells the reader about a friend. He describes this friend as being "a confident, smiling boy, the companion who always knows how to talk to the girls, the one who always finds the right thing to say." He later goes to fight in the Vietnam War and returns "a silent older man." This displays the common traumatic scarring war has on almost all of whom survive.

Whilst The Sorrow of War tells the story from a survivor’s point of view, Innocents Abroad Too: Journey around the world on semester at sea tells the story from an observer. What he observed was war completely change this young man. War took away “confident, smiling boy" and replaced him with a stranger. In the end, the author simply just "wanted [his] old friend back." Sadly it was too late and "he was gone forever."

This change of personality was common for all who fought in the war. As humans we experience guilt, and how is it possible to not feel guilt when you kill? This would likely to lead up to constant stress for the family and friends of these soldiers. Even if they survived(which was unlikely) they had become a different person. This could lead up to stress on families when the surviving soldiers return home, bringing with them the sorrow of war.