The Theme of War In
The Refugees
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a compilation of stories about Vietnamese
immigrants and the problems that they had to encounter after leaving their country of birth to adopt
for the other. There are many themes discussed in the book. However, the theme of war and its
complexity stands out throughout reading the book. In The Refugees, war is understood in three
dimensions. More specifically, the war in The Refugees has the personal, as well as collective and
cultural understanding. All the characters of this book are haunted by the struggles that war has
brought to them.
The war is the ultimate representation of aggression. It is demoralizing and dehumanizing
for both the victorious and the defeated. In The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen the portrait of the
horrors suffered by the victims of war is depicted. For example, one of the stories from the book
Black-Eyed Women depicts the unfortunate reality the victims of war had to go through on a
personal level. With this in mind, the main character in the Black-Eyed Women is nameless.
Moreover, during the whole story she is only referred as “ghostwriter”. A ghostwriter who is a
victim of the war remembers the conversation with her mother as she recalls “It would be the first
time I heard this story, but not the last. In our homeland, she went on, there was a reporter who
said the government tortured the people in prison. So, the government does to him exactly what
he said they did to others. They send him away and no one ever sees him again. That’s what
happens to writers who put their names on things” (1). This extract shows the horrors which forced
people to change the way and the ways in which they perceive the world around them.
Furthermore, this quote portrays the effect war has on human’s personality.
Secondly, war in The Refugees is represented on a collective level. War is a destructive
force that ruins the lives of people. Viet Thanh Nguyen tries to depict this by the experiences that
the characters of this book had throughout their lives. All the main characters from different stories
of this book at some points of their lives were forced to leave their fatherland. In addition to this,
none of the characters had the opportunity to choose their fate. Thereupon, war had affected all the
refugees portrayed in this book collectively.
Lastly, Viet Thanh Nguyen claims that war has cultural effects on the society. For instance,
in The Americans the main character is completely separated from her family. Additionally, she
cannot fit in either of her mother’s Japanese or his father’s African American identity. Because of
the war she wasn’t accepted in the US. Kids were confused what Claire wanted in the US. They
asked her questions like “What are you? What are you doing here?” (132). The inability to relate
with anyone even with her parents made her segregate not only from the world around her but also
from her own family. Therefore, she was culturally affected by the war.
In conclusion, one of the main themes in The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen is the theme
of war and its effects on people are represented on personal cultural and collective levels
throughout the book.
Work Cited
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Refugees. Grove Press, 2017