Longing for Meaningful Touch

"Lying half asleep in his embrace, I looked up and saw on his face the same expression I saw on countless lonely faces every day. It was the homesick look of the children lost in the chaos of warfare, witnessing death and disaster, longing for a meaningful touch" (Nguyen 70).

Throughout the narrative, Kien is keenly aware of the other children in Vietnam; first, it is the children he's unable to play with who catch his attention, and later, it's the orphaned children who huddle together in the streets of Saigon. In this scene, he recognizes the child in the soldier who, like all of the children Kien sees, has been physically, culturally, familially, and spiritually lost to the horrors of war. In a similar way, Kien also has been lost, but his longing for community and meaningful touch began long before he was aware of the war. The trauma he experience, then, was created by his mother's shame over his mixed ethnicity combined with her pride for being a successful business woman in a world typically run by men. Her lack of coping skills and obsession with appearances further contribute to her inability to display affection in traditional ways, leading Kien to search for affection and companionship in unusual places, like with the American soldier he met as a small child. Kien is aware of the suffering experienced by other children in part because of his own suffering, and although it was perhaps different in nature, Kien too lost the sense of close and safe family bonds that children need. His recognition of the same type of loss in the young soldier further speaks to Kien's own loss, and his lack of control (like a soldier) over what comes next.

By Brittany K.