Perspectives in Apocalypse Now and The Sorrow of War: One War, Many Stories Anonymous College

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, shows American MACV-SOG Captain Benjamin Willard’s journey in terminating rogue U.S. colonel Walter Kurtz. Bao Ninh’s 1993 novel The Sorrow of War is a fictional account of the life of a North Vietnamese soldier named Kien, which details his life before, during and after the war. While Apocalypse Now and The Sorrow of War are both accounts of the Vietnam War, they are told from the perspectives of opposing sides of the conflict, thus differ drastically in their representations of the war, specifically in regards to their portrayal of the Vietnamese population and military, the experiences and successes of both country’s militaries, and how the two countries portray women.

The Sorrow of War, being about a North Vietnamese soldier, is told from the perspective of the the North Vietnamese side of the war, and because of this, it naturally portrays the people and military of this region differently than the United States typically does. The novel in no way suggests that the people of North Vietnam are in any way inferior, less advanced or less intellectual than those in the West, namely the United States, but...