In Boa Ninh’s novel, The Sorrow of War, Kien is trapped in parts of Vietnam due to long rainy weather that prevents large scale attacks in the north or in the south. According to the Vietnamese embassy in the United Kingdom the rainy season lasts from may to September with an average of 271 mm […]
Zach Shariff 04/25/15 HIS 354 The Sorrow of War and the Omens Of Death The Flag of North Vietnam at the time of the Vietnam War Throughout The Sorrow of War, the themes of death and the dishonor in war is quite prevalent throughout the course of the […]
As an artist, the passage starting on page 88 of The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh spoke to me. As he expresses how the writing began to develop a life of its own and was almost composing itself. I thought to my experiences writing and how natural it feels. I have written some poetry […]
In the book, The Sorrow of War, I was struck by the section of Kien’s father’s death and his prophetic last words to Kien. Kien’s father had been a painter and a failure after the communist government was established. His paintings were criticized as his expressionism was not being relatable to the common worker in a communist country, and was banned […]
As discussed in class this week, the South Vietnamese government demonstrated some self-destructive policies that led to a revolving door of leadership and plummeting approval from the general population of Vietnam. As demonstrated in the video below, even NATO allies couldn’t spin the corruption of the South Vietnamese government in a positive light. Ironically enough, […]
In class we have talked a number of times about American veterans making their way back to Vietnam and finding ways to heal the memory of war. This has been largely successful and many U.S. Veterans, as we have talked about, have developed positive feelings towards the nation. This made me curious about how the […]
It takes a special sort of denial to think that the United States won the war in Vietnam. Every goal we had when we took action was failed, and we left nothing in better shape than it was before we came. In the end the country wound up another on the list of Communist conquests. […]
Although here in the US we are beginning to see more political action, these seem to be small and short term in scale. Even the Occupy movement seems to have all but disappeared from the media. As cold-hearted as it may sound the citizens here are just not desperate enough to be able to affect […]
We kind of touched on the poor treatment of soldiers when they returned from war in class and I remember reading the book “Born on the Fourth of July” which is a biography on Ron Kovic. Kovic was a bright eyed high schooler when he first enlisted in the marines. He did two tours over […]
I had initially set out to write this blog about the role of Vietnamese women and children in the Vietnam War against the United States. But as I was searching for information I came across an interesting article from the Smithsonian Magazine called “Children of the Vietnam War.” The article talks about the many children […]
Drafts, in any situation, create difficult circumstances for those forced into fighting. If called for a draft it is, at least what the circumstance should be although it is not always the case, understood that the situation is dire enough that volunteers are not going to cut it and so the military need more recruits […]
While the class has taken a deeper look into the mind of Korea during Japanese colonization what was the case with Vietnam under French rule? Vietnam and France had very different cultures and backgrounds with histories that were completely different from each other. How did the Vietnamese react to French rule? Well there seems to […]
In Reading 6, the first section talks about the Communist party, post World War 1, specifically the Indochinese Communist Party. The Indochinese Communist Party was design to help and create for the working class. It was created in the hopes that it and it’s people would lead the revolution for the sake of the oppressed […]
Despite the iron fisted approach of the French Imperialism in Vietnam, we see France become a source of identity for some Vietnamese. The iron fisted approach is described by Schoppa: “French control of Vietnam was iron-fisted; any sign of rebellion or resistance was met with a massive response” (281). While France’s “convincing campaign” may have […]
Christian missionaries had been east Asia for quite some time. The expansion of the faith struck Vietnam and the response of it by Vietnamese emperors dramatically affected Vietnam for the next several hundred years. (1) The Vietnamese Confucian state clashed with the Roman Catholic missionaries because the Christian faith needed a certain level of devotion […]
As time went on into the 1900’s both Vietnam and Korea fell to imperialism. Vietnam, although spending a time constantly under threat of Chinese domination, would eventually succumb to imperialism under the French when the Vietnam government was persecuting Catholics in the country. This led to the opportunity for the French to have just cause […]
As the title indicates history appears to be cyclical in nature. As I was reading about the rubber plantations in Vietnam I could not help but compare the experiences to those other oppressed peoples have experienced throughout history: the holocaust, African-American slavery in the US, Colonialism in Africa, Japanese internment camps in the US. Those […]