Who is Sinh, Hien, Phan from The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam and what is their importance? The_Sorrow_of_War English & Literature "Sinh

These characters are Kien's fellow soldiers. Sinh is a comrade whom Kien visits shortly after his return to Hanoi after the war who was once vibrant, lively, and poetic, but is now wasted, dying, and sad. Hien is a female soldier who travels with Kien on the train back to Hanoi. They spend the night together and they depart from each other at the train station with Hien urging Kien to not put too much faith in seeing each other again. The traumatized Phan tells Kien a story of how his attempts to aid a severely wounded soldier are hampered by confusion and rain, leaving him with a vividly imagined and lifelong sense of guilt. All three metaphorically represent and foreshadow aspects of Kien's own postwar suffering.