Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder and wartime atrocities that feature in the source text.

In this novel, Vietnam is both a setting and a symbol. To William, the danger of communist takeover that Vietnam represents to American policymakers means nothing, and he comes to understand that the narrative that the United States has used to sell this war to the public is a travesty. But the narrative itself and the mere possibility that the so-called domino theory would begin to be played out in Vietnam are enough to send William and thousands like him to the place in which he sacrifices his moral code in order to survive. Vietnam robs him of his innocence and dehumanizes him. In Vietnam, he is reviled as a destroyer of lives not praised as a hero saving people from the evils of communism. Thus, Vietnam is a physical and symbolic space of otherness in which governments use humans to play chess.

William’s journal is a symbol of the power of narrative and storytelling. It captures the traumas of his past through the act of recording the day-to-day horrors of war, while the act of sharing the journal with Vincent exposes his vulnerability and is a way to ask for empathy.