Kien's "Little Death"
Kien believes he experiences a "little death" at one point, and he uses several vivid images to describe it. He says "his vital force flowed from him as a broken pot," his life was like a "river with himself standing unsteadily at the peak of a tall hill, silently watching his life ebb away," something within him "froze and became sharp and cold and visible," and he had a "deep slash into which his life force was draining, pouring from him slowly, silently, yet irrevocably" (117). All of these images show an emptying out, a wound of sorts from which something vital is draining. This imagery is commensurate with the violence of the rest of the novel.
Hoa
Bao Ninh writes of Hoa, "She was a magnificent portrait of courage as she stood against the setting sun, her lovely slim body erect, arm outstretched firing at the dog, and the dog only" (190). This is an image of heroism, power, beauty, and courage. It contrasts with the terrible things Kien has seen in war, but it is also a tragic image, for Hoa will be raped and killed not long after this. There is no actual lasting purity, bravery, or beauty because war destroys it all and demands sacrifices from all.
The War
Generally, the war imagery in the text is of a horrifying, hellish, phantasmagoric experience. There are men screaming and being blown to bits, heroic figures wading into the maelstrom of battle, spectral figures haunting battlefields, explosions, flares, and utter devastation. There is nothing moral or redeeming about the conflict according to Bao Ninh's images: war is merely a Dantean monstrosity, rendering its participants utterly bereft of a meaningful life.
The Lake
Ninh describes Kien and Phuong's lake in the most idyllic, pastoral, and beautiful terms. There is "fresh cool air" (137), "fresh cool grass," and "bright scattered stars" (132); it is a "wonderful April afternoon, with the cicadas singing and the flame trees in full flowers" (132). The lake and the day that Kien and Phuong spend there before he goes away to war is an exemplar of the type of life that was just about to vanish, never to return, to be replaced with only horror and death.
