The Sorrow of War - The Importance of Setting

Often the setting in a text will carry symbolic significance, supporting as well the writer's key themes. Discuss these concepts in the light of The Sorrow of War.

The setting plays a huge role in The Sorrow of War as it is the setting, the places that hold the most importance to Kien. Every time he sets foot on a battle field or somewhere touched by war, memories come flooding back to him, dragging him back to the time when he was fighting. Everything thing Kien sees he can relate back to war, it is as even though the war is over, the war inside his head is not. When watching "a pantomime...many years later...an artist bent over, writhing his body in agonised desperation, by magical association Kien recalled the moments when Thinh had similarly crouched in sobbing despair"(pg 31)

Though the war has ended years ago, his memories are still so vivid, so graphic that it feels like yesterday and he as started to loose concept of time; "how many long years have passed? Ten or eleven? Twelve? No. Thirteen?...Or was it longer?", Kien often thinks to himself, not completely sure what the answer is.