The Sorrow Of War - Setting from the Book

"Kien knows the area well. It was here, at the end of the dry season of 1969, that his Battalion 27 was surrounded and almost totally wiped out....That was the dry season when the sun burned harshly, the wind blew fiercely, and the enemy sent napalm spraying through the jungle and a sea of fire enveloped them, spreading like the fires of hell....The diamond-shaped grass clearing was piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships....No jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass. No plants." page 2.

The setting of an area in the Jungle of Screaming souls really lives up to the name of the jungle. This was the area where Kiens battalion almost got completely wiped out which must have been a horrendous experience and for Kien to go back later with the MIA team to collect remains of bodies and to know what occurred there must have been difficult.

Hearing that the grass clearing is diamond shaped, I thought that it might have given some hope as diamonds are associated with happiness and prettiness, however then describing that the clearing was "piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships", contradicts the shape of the clearing and suggests that even the few pretty places in the jungle are covered with death and sorrow. The fact that "No jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass. No plants." is almost like that section of jungle has been so tainted by death, so destroyed by the war that nothing new, nothing good can ever grow there again. This, I believe is a metaphor to how Kien feels. He was a survivor of the war, walked away from the war physically fine but was so scared mentally and so effected that surviving the war may have not been the best outcome as though he may still be alive and well on the outside, is he really on the inside?

Even the weather was fierce and unforgiving, suggesting that the war was affecting the weather as much as the land and the people.