Respect for the Dead

Death and dying are important themes in "The Sorrow of War". In Vietnamese culture, ancestral respect is an important part of life. Respect for the dead, for parents, and for authority are all extremely important to the Vietnamese people. In the novel, we see Kien losing these highly important cultural values. He shows little respect for his father in life and in death. He only lightly respects the dead that we see throughout the novel, and most of them are not properly cared for or buried, either because of apathy on the soldiers' part, or the inability to bury them due to the manner in which they died (i.e. explosion, fire, etc.) Remembering the dead is also very important to them, and when some of the soldiers speak of Crazy Tung, Kien doesn't even remember him, though they worked together for a long time. I think Kien doesn't have great respect for the dead because he often times seems to envy them. He often wishes he were dead, or places himself intentionally in the midst of danger because he no longer respects his own life, let alone the life or death of those around him.

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