Who are the lucky ones?

“Dying and surviving were separated by a thin line; they were killed one at a time, or all together; they were killed instantly, or were wounded and bled to death in agony; they could live but suffer the nightmares of white blasts which destroyed their souls and stripped their personalities bare.” (Ninh, 89)

During times of war, a soldier knows that any day he or she could lose their life; every day is a constant game of survival. As we all know, many people die or are fatally wounded during the course of battle. Some would say that those who make it out alive are the lucky ones, but is that really true? Survivors will often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder in which they can experience troubles with a number of things. Even attempts at being social are very difficult for some veterans, and in some cases, hallucinations occur. They find themselves avoiding anything that has to do with war or violence and they often abuse substances like alcohol.
There seems to be a theme of “haunting” in The Sorrow of War. I think it would be safe to say that survivors of war are haunted with memories of their experiences and will be dealing with post-war difficulties for the rest of their lives. We see Kien’s daily struggles after he returns from 10 years of fighting. He is not the same; he never got the chance to live because war was his life. Some survivors may wonder why we would call them “lucky”. I can see how survival and death would be “separated by a thin line” as Ninh writes. Either way, suffering is guaranteed and happiness seems hardly attainable. Is it really better to live after experiencing such horrors, then? It really is hard to say, but from reading this book and All Quiet on the Western Front, I hope that we can all get a better grasp of the true impacts that war can make on a soldier’s life. While saying this, I also realize that we will never be able to understand unless we have endured the agony ourselves.



This website gives a brief description of emotional effects of war on soldiers:

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11261/1/The-Emotional-Effects-of-War-on-Soldiers.html