While war trauma is a major and recurring theme of the novel, The Sorrow of War, the bookcan actually be read as a book about the trauma of rape; specifically it is the rape of Kien’s boyhood girlfriend, Phuong, around which the narrative is built. As the story proceeds, there is much made of the exploits of war and the sorrow that it visits upon the combatants and the people with whom the combatants associate themselves. The book leaves readers with no doubt about the accuracy of the truism “War is hell.” But the dramatic and traumatic event that appears at the logical point near the end of the book, the unified action around which all the other actions revolve, is Phuong's rape and Kien's resulting rejection of her.