Bao Ninh’s 1991 novel, The Sorrow of War, likens a Vietnamese soldier’s war experience to the more common experience of a rainstorm. Ninh chooses recognizable images of storms, rivers, and other familiar sights related to the water cycle so that a vast audience can relate to the soldier’s experience. In Ninh’s story, seventeen-year-old Kien joins the North Vietnamese Army in 1965. For ten years, Kien supports the war effort. At twenty-seven when the war ends, Kien continues to serve the army, and his life never returns to pre-war normalcy. Like rain, war descends on Kien, and saturates life on earth; unlike rain, however, war may never truly evaporate for Kien.

Author Bao Ninh compares the war with a rain storm to show how powerless soldiers like Kien are to stop the war. Ninh writes, “That’s how the war started, with a storm. For Kien the storm continued for nearly eleven years and even after the war his mental skies were clouded for another ten” (p. 170). Just as Kien cannot stop a rain storm, he cannot prevent the war in Vietnam. The war storm darkens the sky over Vietnam and Kien’s own “mental skies.” He is also unable to stop the storm of war which continues to rage in his mind for years after the fighting. Regardless of Kien’s personal choices, war descends like a rainstorm upon him.

The Sorrow of War continues to employ the image of rain to illustrate the magnitude of death during war. Kien describes, “…a rain of arms and legs dropping before him onto the grass by the Sa Thay river during a night raid by B-52s” (p. 89). As rain falls with innumerable raindrops, the war Kien experiences leads to countless deaths.

The novel relates the permeating qualities of both rain and war in Kien’s life. When Kien works with the military team that recovers bodies from the battle fields, nighttime in the wild becomes especially difficult. One night: “The old tarpaulin covering the truck is torn, full of holes, letting the water drip, drip, drip through onto the plastic sheets covering the remains of soldiers laid out in rows below Kien’s hammock” (p. 2). The damaged, ineffective tarpaulin exposes Kien to the elements. That night, the damp reaches Kien: “…it’s long moist, chilly fingers sliding in and around the hammock where Kien lies shivering, half-awake, half-asleep…” (p. 2). While rain reaches Kien through a torn shelter, Kien’s war memories reach him without his consent. Kien’s nightmares remind him of dead teenagers - soldiers once under his command, and murdered civilian girls. A fellow soldier wakes Kien from his dream, but even awake, he worries: “Is the final scene, the unfinished, bloody dream of this morning, about to intrude itself in his mind? Will the pictures unfold against his wishes as he sits staring at the road?” (p. 40). Kien cannot keep the rain out of the truck, and he cannot keep the war out of his mind.

Kien sees parts of humans mix into the landscape, just as rainwater does. The rainy season and the fighting combine to form, “Flooding [on] the jungle floor, turning the battlefield into a marsh whose surface water turned rust-coloured from the blood” (p. 4). The rain causes surface water to accumulate while the war causes blood to accumulate. Together, the water and blood flood the land. Other times, people are, “totally vaporized, or blasted into such small pieces that their remains had long since been liquidized into mud” (p. 24). Against the weapons of war, the human bodies around Kien become part of the earth, sometimes indistinguishable from the mud.

Kien and his fellow soldiers wonder if the intangible parts of a human being linger on earth as well. In 1969, all except ten men in Kien’s 27th Battalion die in battle. Kien remembers, “After that battle no one mentioned the 27th Battalion any more, though numerous souls of ghosts and devils were born in that deadly defeat. They were still loose, wandering…drifting along the stream, refusing to depart for the Other World” (p. 5). Kien and others still feel the ghosts, and, “Some said there were ghostly streams in the jungle where those who drank the water began immediately to suffer all sorts of diseases, including mental illness (p. 96). Just as rainwater flows through streams, Kien and his fellow soldiers suspect lost souls in the streams.

In addition to body parts and souls, the soldiers believe that the human experience remains on the battlegrounds: “It seemed to the soldiers…that intense physical pain could mingle with the earth and grow into trees in the jungle” (p. 97). Human remains mix into the mud, ghosts fill the streams that people drink from, and suffering seeps into the ground for the jungle plants to take back up again. Rainwater and “intense physical pain” infiltrate the earth, and the roots of the jungle plants absorb them both.

The novel ends before the analogy between war and the water cycle can finish. Rainwater evaporates, but for Kien and the other soldiers, the war may not. The soldiers’ futures remain uncertain, and they can only wonder to what extent the war will continue to affect their lives. Kien’s friend, Phan, still thinks about the death of one enemy soldier: “After many years of peace Phan was still tormented by the memory. Would the drowned man ever stop floating through his mind?” (p. 94). Phan’s war memories pool in his mind, and he doesn’t know if these memories will ever evaporate.

Kien also worries for himself. Despite the uncertainty of his future, however, Kien decides to live, and to commit himself to a task: “There’s a new life ahead of me, and a new era for Vietnam. I have to survive” (pp. 43-44). Kien resolves: “I must write! To rid myself of these devils, to put my tormented soul finally to rest instead of letting it float in a pool of shame and sorrow” (p. 146).

References

Ninh, B. (1993). The sorrow of war. (F. Palmos, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1991).