In every reading I do, I always find one passage or even one sentence
that acts as a mechanism for unlocking the text; everything that comes
before is culminated in that passage, and all that follows can be more
fully understood by the interpretive light shed upon it by this crucial
part in the book.
In Bao Ninh's novel, this passage
occurs on pg. 82 (of my edition) upon the sentence that begins with
"Kien had perhaps watched more killings and seen more corpses than any
contemporary writer," finding its individual realization in the
paragraph that ends with "For every unknown soldier, for every
collection of MIA remains, there was a story" (83). Ninh addresses
nearly every key issue of the novel in this passage, illustrating the
visceral horrors of warfare and its human cost physically and mentally
through a lens of literacy. Kien describes the nature of the deaths he
has witnessed through images of shapes and colours, which furthers the
atmospheric tension in the novel between the realities of the Vietnam
War and Kien's persistent struggle to define them in a way that is
respectful of the dead and fallen through its characteristics of high
literary art.
At this point in the novel, Kien still
wrestles internally with how to embody his experiences in writing, but
he encounters an image of a burial of the dead that seems to give him a
vague epiphanical direction to his musings, for his narration explaining
the end of a mysterious forest song after burying the bones of a corpse
found with a guitar illustrate to him that the presence and dominion of
death should not signify the silence of the storyteller, but rather
amplify the significance of the message.
Every soldier
is said to have heard a different version of the song, and this can be
taken to mean that Kien should employ his vast memories of death to
reach a great amount of readers through the structuring of the
inevitability of death and war into the beauty of literature.
Furthermore,
through the alignment of death and nature, Ninh is possibly addressing
the necessity of death in understanding the crucial foundations of
artistic and literary symmetry; without opposites, a creative process
cannot occur. Without death, a writer cannot write about the emotions
and ordering of human existence around the indifferent world. Ninh
states that "the yarn became folklore" (83), emphasizing that death
transforms naturally into the consciousness of a community and humanity
itself, and Kien begins to understand this as he witnesses death singing
of its memories.
-Tim J.
Tim, I agree that death and nature are important elements in this novel and in Kien's own writing. It is interesting that Kien seems to point out how glorious his younger days were because they stand out in such stark contrast to his post-war life yet he maintains that war is never a justifiable measure to take. It does bring up your point that one element can not ever be truly appreciated unless it is compared to its opposite.
ReplyDelete--Kathy
Hi Tim!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post! I find very commendable how Kien feels the need to commemorate the soldiers who have died through his novel. He gives a voice to those who because of death cannot tell their stories for themselves. As you mention, literacy is a mode in which Kien is able to pay tribute to the memory of all those who have fallen as well as define a visual image of the war in a very strong manner. As you so eloquently mentioned, Kien uses his writing, not only as a catharsis, but as a way to illustrate and bring to light how literary art can carry a memory for future generations to learn from and remember.
- Claire
Nice post Tim! It does seem that nature and death are intertwined as the novel progresses. His use of writing is definitely a way to show how he can use death to reach out to a mass public, while serving as the voice for those who died in the war. In this perspective, Kien is using writing as not only to exorcise his demons, but show how war is destructive and the consequences that result from it.
ReplyDelete-Ace
Really enjoyed your insight on the novel. Life and death go hand and hang and I believe Bao Ninh was able to incorporate all that. I liked what Kathy said about how different Kien's life was pre-war and post-war. It seems that a gloomy shadow followed Kien wherever he went after the war, almost hauntingly.
ReplyDelete-Paul