Family life is very important to Vietnamese people. The families had great respect for their ancestors, for current relatives and for those who would come. In the Vietnamese family, children respected their fathers. Everyone respected the dead and believed in the importance of proper burial of the dead. The family's survival and honor rested on these beliefs. During the war Kien lost these values: his father was not properly respected, the dead were not properly buried and were even forgotten. After the war, Kien spends his time struggling to return to these values ​​and cleanse his soul of these sins. Early in the novel we learn that Kien never understood his father. Kien also states that she understands "why her mother had left her father and come to live with this wise, kind-hearted man." (Nona, 59). It seems that Kien does not respect his father as his culture dictates. However, he tells a story of life with his father before the war in which the reader learns that while he does not understand his father, Kien respects and cares for him. “Every time he entered his father's attic study, Kien's heart ached and he choked with compassion…. Twice a day Kien brought frugal meals to his father…” (Ninh, 124). Kien may not have a close father-son relationship with his father, but he still cares for his father, as a son should. It is only when he struggles to organize his chaotic life after the war that Kien understands his father. “Only now, in his middle age, could Kien truly understand those years.” (Ninh, 124). Proper burial of... middle of paper... facilitated soldier, Tung, whom Kien forgot . “'Maybe it was Tung. What do you think, Kien?” "Tung who?" Kien asked. «Crazy Tung. The guard, don't you remember?'” (Ninh, 97). Yet after the war, Kien can't stop remembering all those who died. “He mistook her first for a jungle girl named Hoa… Then, horrifyingly, for a naked girl at Saigon airport on April 30, 1975.” (Nona, 113). Kien returned to his prewar culture of remembering the dead. The thirty years the Vietnamese spent fighting the war destroyed the value system of Vietnamese culture. The war devastated the country, villages and families. After the war, the Vietnamese began to rebuild their way of life. Kien's character, in The Sorrow of War, shows the plight of the Vietnamese people before, during and after the Vietnam War.