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Kien’s Father
Hoa was a young Vietnamese woman who helped guide Kien and his men toward the Cambodian border in 1968. Most of the soldiers traveling with Kien were injured, making their group vulnerable to attack. Kien didn’t know Hoa well, but he had to trust her because he didn’t know the area very well. However, Hoa mistakenly brought the group to the edge of Crocodile Lake, putting them in a very dangerous situation with no escape route. Kien was so incensed that he almost killed Hoa, but he gave her a second chance. While the group stayed by Crocodile Lake, he and Hoa went back through the woods. They found the landmark Hoa had been looking for, at which point they took a break and got to know each other. Hoa was only 19, and Kien quickly came to like her. But their friendship was cut short when they spotted a group of American soldiers. Hoa sacrificed herself by shooting their hunting dog and running in the other direction, drawing the soldiers away from Kien and the wounded group at Crocodile Lake. Kien could hear the Americans raping Hoa, and though he wanted to come to her aid, he realized it would be futile.
Hoa Quotes in The Sorrow of War
The The Sorrow of War quotes below are all either spoken by Hoa or refer to Hoa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 146-200 Quotes
Not one of them asked about Hoa. At first he found it disagreeably strange. Then, with its acceptance, he too began to forget about her. Was it that such sacrifices were now an everyday occurrence? Or that they were expected, even of such young people? Or worse, that they were too concerned worrying about their own safety to bother with others?
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It all seemed so long ago, and because he couldn’t even find the head-shaped rock—it had been blown apart or washed away—it seemed a touch unlikely that it had ever happened. Of course it had, but not even finding the clearing where he had last seen her allowed him that escape into such possibilities.
What remained was sorrow, the immense sorrow, the sorrow of having survived. The sorrow of war.
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Get the entire The Sorrow of War LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hoa Character Timeline in The Sorrow of War
The timeline below shows where the character Hoa appears in The Sorrow of War. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 44-56
...In a nightmare, for instance, he sees a pretty young woman he once knew named Hoa. He and Hoa knew each other in the Jungle of Screaming Souls in 1968. They...
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Pages 108-116
...though he was always at an emotional remove—he mistook her for Phuong, for Hien, for Hoa (a woman he knew in the Jungle of Screaming Souls), and even for the corpse...
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Pages 146-200
...border, so they joined forces and started traveling together. Both groups followed a woman named Hoa who, although she was acting as a guide, didn’t actually know the area very well....
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...Kien and his men to find themselves locked in against Crocodile Lake. He almost shot Hoa for making this mistake, but he instead gave her one last chance to redeem herself...
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Hoa shared cigarettes with Kien, who was no longer suspicious of her. As they smoked, he...
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...a large group of American soldiers walking through the jungle. He immediately ducked and pulled Hoa down behind him, hiding as the Americans progressed on the path with a large hunting...
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The Americans eventually caught Hoa and started brutally raping her. Horrified, Kien realized that Hoa had sacrificed her own life...
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...to Crocodile Lake with the Remains-Gathering Team years later, he couldn’t find the area where Hoa had been raped and murdered. The entire memory had already seemed like a distant nightmare,...
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