As chapter three begins, Le Ly is boarding the plane for her return journey to Vietnom. She is affraid of how her family might welcome her due to the "open wounds" remaining from her departure in the 1970s. She also fears the "open wounds" that the Vietnom war might have left on a struggling country. As her new journey begins, she reflects upon the journey she has taken to get here and remembers her own wounds in her life.
During the war, Le Ly was taken captive several times due to her mistakes and the mistakes of others who falsely accused her. She is brutally beaten and morally scared from her experiences. She must learn to trust in a world that is untrustworthy and how to live in a world of death. Her experiences are beyond any of a normal child's as she sees suffering and death constantly. The brutallity she witnesses and experiences is beyond that of any movie rated "X" or "NC-17" and worse than most adults today could handle. Her family, community, and world became torn apart as war ripped through Vietnam. Still, though, she finds hope through deductive reasoning like listed below.
"Living things breathe and as long as I could feel my own breath I would know I was alive." (91)
As Le ly described her experiences in the war, I was continually reminded of those who lost their lives in the World War II Holocaust. Thousands of people were murdered, some due to their own mistakes while most lost their lives do to the mistakes of others. The people effected by the Holocaust witnessed unimaginable brutallity and the worse of human nature yet still some survived and learned to forgive.
To learn more about the Holocaust, please visit http://www.ushmm.org/holocaust/. For further reading about the experiences of war, especially the Holocaust, please try reading Night or The Diary of a Young Girl.
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