I’ve just finished a trilogy of critical essays on The Sorrow of War. Not to “tear down a monument,” but to carefully peel back the layers: from the psychology of the protagonist, the authenticity of the wartime experience, to the novel’s aesthetic and philosophical limitations when viewed from today’s perspective.
Essay 1: A Corrupted Diary File
Essay 2: Under Kiên’s Shadow
Essay 3: The Political Economy of a “Masterpiece”
Each essay handles its own domain of knowledge, without mixing them. All the concepts are basic; anyone unfamiliar can look them up in a few minutes.
ESSAY 1 – “A CORRUPTED DIARY FILE”
Primary field: Technical – Craft-based literary criticism
This essay treats the novel like a software system and performs a direct “technical audit reading.”
Basic areas of knowledge involved:
Computer science and the mindset of a software engineer:
Looking at the overall architecture, processing flows, “technical debt,” logging, spaghetti-like plot tangles, leaks in rhythm and emotional flow.
Technique-oriented literary criticism:
Dissecting narrative structure, pacing, information density, the use of stream-of-consciousness—when it’s a difficult, deliberate technique and when it’s just sloppy writing disguised as “stream of consciousness.”
Comparative war literature:
Placing the novel against technical benchmarks established by classic war-literature authors worldwide.
Systems thinking:
Viewing each chapter as a “functional module”: input = what experience, memory, or psychological state enters; processing = how it’s handled; output = whether the emotional and thematic results match the intended purpose.
Main point of Essay 1:
If judged purely by craftsmanship, The Sorrow of War has many loose sections and underprocessed passages. Therefore, it is difficult to justify its label as a “masterpiece” solely through the artistic quality within the text.
ESSAY 2 – “UNDER KIÊN’S SHADOW”
Primary field: Psychology – Methodology
This essay resets the foundation: if you mention trauma or post-war psychological disorders, you must speak correctly in the language of psychology, not just stick labels on things because they sound impressive.
Basic areas involved:
Clinical psychology:
Clearly distinguishing symptoms, syndromes, and disorders; understanding PTSD as a continuum rather than a sticker slapped on anyone who suffers.
Statistics and data science:
Explaining distributions, outliers, and the middle majority; why you cannot take an extreme individual case and let it represent an entire generation of Vietnamese veterans.
Scientific methodology:
Studying an exceptional case is not the same as generalizing about “the soldier as such.” If one wants to move from Kiên to “the image of the Vietnamese soldier,” one must show the verification process, not jump steps.
Literary character studies:
A fictional character differs from a real human being. Interpretive authority works differently in fiction. Kiên’s “identity” is a literary construction serving artistic intent—not the clinical file of an actual person.
Conclusion of Essay 2:
Using a fictional, extreme outlier to represent an entire generation is a methodological error—even before discussing whether the novel is good or bad, right or wrong.
ESSAY 3 – “THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF A ‘MASTERPIECE’”
Primary field: Political economy – Cultural sociology
This is the widest-angle essay: no longer examining Kiên, but the system that produced, selected, amplified, and canonized the book.
Domains involved:
Political economy:
Analyzing the value chain of a supposedly “masterpiece” work; who holds gatekeeping power; how cultural markets operate; how mechanisms of “a few players holding all the advantages” function.
Cultural sociology:
How a work becomes “canonical,” how a book accumulates symbolic capital to stand atop others, and the power relations among different “playing fields” in literary life.
Media and journalism:
How media frames the work; how public discourse and critics create amplification loops; the hidden agendas embedded in the way people talk about the novel.
History and memory studies:
The struggle for narrative authority over the past; narrative sovereignty; revisionism; how a work participates in rewriting collective memory of war and postwar conditions.
Soft power and cultural diplomacy:
Literature as a tool for shaping national image; strategies to present a “voice from the other side” and leverage it internationally.
Institutional analysis:
The roles of publishers, award committees, universities, curricula, and academic citation networks—all forming a certification machine for “value.”
Comparative cases:
Postwar Japan, novels caught between censorship and awards, and the politics of translation.
Message of Essay 3:
If Essay 1 shows technical limitations, and Essay 2 shows methodological issues, Essay 3 answers the remaining question:
Why, despite those, did the book still become a “masterpiece”?
The answer lies in the economics and politics of cultural life, not solely in the text itself.
Summary
The trilogy clearly divides into:
Essay 1: A skill-audit of the writing, a technical evaluation of the text.
Essay 2: Fixing conceptual and methodological gaps about psychology.
Essay 3: Mapping the power networks around the “masterpiece,” identifying creators, beneficiaries, and those who pay the cost.
Anyone who wishes to criticize may do so—but please read all three essays first. Don’t slap on labels like “anti-literature” just by glancing at the titles. This trilogy doesn’t deny literary value; it exposes the structural and power layers hidden beneath the label “masterpiece.”