Phuong Symbolism

Of crucial importance is the different attitudes between Nguyen and Quang has towards the Vietnam War. Nguyen represents the traditional view that the Vietnam War was a failure on the part of the Americans, a mistake and pointless war that ruined the lives of many. What is surprising is Quang’s view. With an immediate and loud retort to Nguyen’s negative feelings towards the Vietnam war, Seol’s portrayal of Quang immediately grabs the audience’s attention. Quang is grateful for the Vietnam war, and “thankful for the American soldiers that gave up their lives so [he] could live.” Actor Seol aptly captures the spirit and sentiments of an actual Vietnamese refugee, and in doing so provides a refreshing and different perspective about the Vietnam War. Faced with these differing perspectives, the audience must come to realize that America is not a monolith, but instead composed of people from many different backgrounds with varying experiences, attitudes, thoughts, and

Loung is tired of hearing how women are supposed to be sweet, kind and delicate. She wants to be independent and wild like the girls she sees on T.V. One day when Loung was playing with some friends she had accidentally hit Li and cut her lip. After she went home she sat in her closet so angry and ashamed. Meung sits outside the closet doors and consoles her. Telling him it was an accident Muang proceeds to tell Loung “You are not a boy, You don't need to play so aggressive” (58). Loung acts a different way at home than she does at school. Being a proper girl is a very important aspect of the Cambodian culture. Being proper and having the best etiquette is a way to show how high your status is. “Women demonstrate their high status through proper behavior. This includes both proper comportment and correct actions. Women are to walk slowly and softly, be so quiet in their movements that one cannot hear the sound of their silk skirt rustling”.(Ledgerwood 112). Loung starts to wear more revealing clothes as she grows older. She puts on makeup and flirts with boys as she sees the other girls in her class doing. When her brother starts to notice he gets angry at Loung, Accusing her of throwing herself away to impress the kids at school. This causes all of Loungs Cambodian friends

Unlike Pyle who forces his idea on the Vietnamese, Fowler (understands the Vietnameses want peace) more than anything else. After seeing the girls in the House of Five Hundreds Girls, Pyle reflects, “You know, I think it was seeing all those girls in that house. They were so pretty. Why, she might have been one of them. I wanted to protect her”(Greene 49). Pyle selfishly believes he is protecting Phuong by loving her without even asking whether she want to be protected. It is just like the U.S. in Vietnam War, where U.S. think they are doing Vietnam a big favor by saving them from the evil communists when in reality, Vietnamese people value independent more than that. Although Pyle finds it really hard to grasp the view of the Vietnamese, Fowler,

In her book The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990, author Marilyn Young examines the series of political and military struggles between the United States and Vietnam, a nation that has been distinctively separated as the South and the North. Young chooses to express the daily, weekly, monthly progresses of the affairs collectively called the Vietnam Wars, focusing on the American interventions in the foreign soil. She seeks to provide an answer to a question that has haunted the world for years: What was the reason behind the United States interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country in which it had no claims at all? Young discloses the overt as well as covert actions undertaken by the U.S. government officials regarding the foreign affairs with Vietnam and the true nature of the multifaceted objectives of each and every person that’s involved had.

Vietnam made a big portion of history also through its use of slang and war specified language.  This language came about through many means including its adaption to the Vietnamese language, coded words, phrases, profanity and initials that represent war objects, and other means, and to represent or even hide their emotional stand points.  On page 19, O'Brien describes the young soldiers as actors.  They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.  On page 12, Lieutenant describes his feelings for Martha as dense, crushing love.  He then explains how he wants to sleep inside her lungs, breathe her blood, amd be smothered.  This sounds like extremely harsh description for love.  However, the soldier's environment became the most they could relate to.  For example, to describe the death of a soldier, they'd used phrases such as "Boom. Down. Like Cement," or "flat fuck fell."  O'Brien explains how the soldiers would make conscious efforts to joke about things and make comical references to have themselves laugh.  Page 19 describes that they used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness.  At the end of page 18 and beginning of page 19, we find that the men would now and then panic and have the desire to cry out for the misery to stop.  They'd make unguaranteed promises to God and their parents in hope that that would be their source of survival.  On page 11 O'Brien tells that the Imagination was a

The Vietnam War is a strange and unexplainable event in American history. The controversies surrounding the American involvement in Vietnam and the need for Vietnam veterans to tell their stories of the war are prevalent in the post-Vietnam culture of America. "The stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane"(89). The story of the sweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong explains this quote of the veteran stories never make exact sense, but they are stories from a war that never quite made exact sense either. The story of "Sweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong," involving a young girl coming to Vietnam

Karen Turner and author’s collaborator, Phan Thanh Haou, in this heartbreaking book, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam, explore the abyss between Vietnamese and Americans cultures and examine the consequences of war in Vietnamese women through several interviews. The author offers an array of women stories with different perspectives, understanding and attempts to understand and leave an open-ended question, why “When war strikes close to home, even women must fight.” Turner feels these women’s stories sincerely. She is an active participant in these conversations and she is willing to grow with them, as a woman.

   Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War is a contrapuntal reading to American literature on the Vietnam War. But rather than stand in stark contrast to Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War is strangely similar, yet different at the same time. From a post-colonialist standpoint, one must take in account both works to get an accurate image of the war. The Sorrow of War is an excellent counterpoint because it is truthful. Tim O' Brien writes: ". . . you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." (O' Brien, 42) Bao Ninh succeeds in this respect. And it was for this reason that the Vietnamese

"If baby Hung and I and my father's spirit were to survive the death of Vietnam, we would have to turn our eyes elsewhere—to the West…" (239). Le Ly had married an American, who many see as the enemy, and most of her family members did not approve of this. Marrying an American was only a part of the problem. The difference in ages, with Ed being much older, and marrying so soon after the death of her father went against traditions. "You betray your ancestors" (347)! Even knowing all of this, moving to America is what needed to be done to protect her family and their futures. When Le Ly's father was alive, he had told her to take care of her son, whatever that entailed. "Raise him the best way you can. That is the battle you were born to fight" (201). Now, honoring her dead father, she remembered his words. The future was not bright for her in Vietnam. And with a growing boy to think of, she had to make the hard decision to leave everything and everybody she knows behind. With Ed as her husband, she knew she could give her son a better future where endless opportunities await him and he will not know the hardships of war. "…he would see to it that I would never have to work again; that my little boy, Jimmy, would be raised in a nice neighborhood and go to an American school; and that neither of us would have to face the dangers and travails of war again. …the

After experiencing the promiscuous House of 500 Girls, Pyle decides that he going to forcefully take Phuong, a woman who he had met moments before, away from the house because after “seeing all those girls in that house. She might have [become] one of them. I want to protect her” (Greene 49). Pyle’s perception that Phoung “might become one of them” represents his naivety as he automatically assumes that she will submit if she is left alone, therefore he believes that it’s his job to protect her by making the right decisions for her. This symbolizes the actions that the US government took as American exceptionalism led them to believe that the success of their country gave them superiority over other nations; when they viewed a struggling country

In the book ‘The Quiet American’, Fowler--a british journalist--holds a more justified argument compared to Pyle, who represents the US; Fowler considers for more issues and people around him, while Pyle only follows his own thought and is not willing to hold back his idea for the good of others. Pyle, as a US aid sent to Vietnam, holds a belief to spread democracy around and give more chance to native vietnamese people. When Pyle and Fowler are arguing about what sort of government should vietnamese people have in a tower guarded by 2 vietnamese soldiers; Fowler said they do not care about the government, all they want is enough food, but Pyle strongly disagree with him ‘They’ll be forced to believe what they are told, they won’t be allowed

The way he goes among this is very proper because he tells Fowler his intentions from the get go and that does not go over very well, for the reason Fowler doesn’t want anyone else to have her. Pyle gets her and is going to marry her, but before he can he is murdered, which eventually lets Fowler get Phuong back. Pyle took this positively and was never down about Phuong and that is why he worked so hard to get her because he know that she was worth than just a girl to sleep

This passage is adapted from Wayson Choy’s ‘The Jade Peony’ and portrays the fear of a young boy who has recently lost his mother. The reader is able to infer the situation from the passage despite it not being clearly mentioned. The reader infers that the passage is about a juvenile boy who sits beside his dying mother and is then taken care of by family friends, predominantly the Chins.

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

The book, The Latehomecomer, is a fascinating story about a Hmong family and their struggle to get out of Laos and come to America as refugees. The Hmong people are a very proud people and they do not want to forget their culture. One can clearly see that the Hmong people hold close their identity and do not want to conform to the Vietnamese way. They take pride in their culture, their society, and the way they view how government should run. Hmong people did not agree with the Vietnamese communist government and were willing to join forces and help the United States as much as possible so that they could fight for what they believed in. Even though most of the young men and boys that fought in the war died in battle or were