The Sympathizer

Having fled Vietnam, the plane with the narrator, the General, Bon, and the rest of the evacuees lands at a refugee camp in Guam. Bon is inconsolable after the death of his wife and child: “I wept,” the narrator says, “but I was no match for Bon, who had a lifetime’s worth of unused tears to spend” (51).

The General, still dressed in his military uniform, tells the narrator he would like to visit his fellow refugees in their barracks (“Our people need me,” he says) to help boost morale. The narrator accompanies him, but the visit has the opposite effect on the refugees. Having set a mere foot in the camp, the General is surprised when he is pelted with a woman’s slipper. Soon, all the women in the vicinity have emerged from their tents and begin beating the General with their slippers, demanding to know where their husbands are and mockingly calling him a “hero.” The General’s uniform is torn to shreds by the women, so the narrator finds him civilian clothes.

Bon’s wife and child are buried the next day. The narrator writes that losing his wife and son without knowing who killed them will define Bon forever: “The bullet would forever spin in Bon’s mind on a perpetual axis, taunting and haunting him with the even chance of coming from friend or foe” (54).