Before reading The Sorrow of War, I assumed that the only reason the Vietnam War was so rejected was because in America the public were absorbed in a hippie phase. I always thought that Victims of PTSD only transpired from the most global and gruesome wars, such as WW1 and WW2. It wasn’t until a fellow classmate recited a section from the novel where a fellow veteran named Vuong fell into a cycle of drinking, and sleeping. He was used as the example of what many soldiers became postwar when they didn’t know what to do with their lives. The alcohol was most likely implemented as a coping mechanism for the horrific flashbacks they experienced. Kien himself drank to survive but he was able to adopt writing as his method to heal from the pain of
