Gazing And Being Gazed

The Vietnam War brings readers a new war literature in American literature and era, promotes abundantly the prosperity of American Vietnam War literature. These works vividly picture the American soldiers during the Vietnam War. However, the other side of the war, the Vietnamese is not familiar to readers when they read American Vietnam War literature. The American writer James Webb uses the realistic technique to depict the images of the Vietnamese in his virgin work Fields of Fire, which plays a driving role in constructing the images of Vietnamese. As a Northern Army veteran, Bao Ninh reviews his life and feelings about the war and then writes the novel The Sorrow of War which is based on his ten-year-war experience and its aftermath. Through the depiction of the Vietnamese in the novel, we can obtain a more specific and more comprehensive image of the Vietnamese.The thesis attempts to interpret the Vietnamese images in the two novels by analyzing "gazing" and "being gazed" through combining historical and social backgrounds of the novels. From political and realistic points, the thesis analyzes in details the Southerners and Northerners in Vietnam. It points out that the two writers described two different kinds of images of the Vietnamese from their different ideologies.The thesis consists of five chapters. The introduction is a brief survey of the Vietnam War, American Vietnam War literature, Vietnam War writers, and the status of Vietnam War literature. And then the thesis elaborates on the contents of the two novels, their authors as well as the status quo of the novels. Furthermore, definitions of the Southerners and Northerners in Vietnam, the purpose and theme of the thesis are contained in it, too. Through the analysis of the images of the Vietnamese, the thesis aims at exposing the ideological function in the construction of image and making readers understand the real images of the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War.Chapter One attempts to elaborate on the Southerners'images being gazed by the Americans and the Northerners, and the Southerners'self-gazing as well. They are a group of contemptible rescuees but not grateful to the Americans. The Northerners prefer to see the Southerners as a part of them and their rescuees from the hell of Imperialism, and the Southerners are considered as assistants of the unification of the country by the Northerners. However, most Southerners think they are the innocent victims who only want peace.Chapter Two focuses on the images of the Northerners in the eyes of the Americans, the Southerners and the Northerners. The Northerners are mysterious enemy for the Americans. But in the eyes of the Southerners, the image of the Northerners is more complicated, and is mixed with sympathy and fear:the Northerners are their enemy and compatriots. Nonetheless, the Northerners also see themselves as sufferers besides the images of unifiers after the war.Chapter Three is an analysis on the disintegration and unification of the images of the Southerners and the Northerners. Through the study of the disintegration and unification of the images of Vietnamese, we can conclude each writer's different ideologies in constructing his Vietnamese images. Therefore, guided by their prejudice, the anamorphic images of Vietnamese are composed.The conclusion is the summary of all the aspects mentioned above. It elaborates on the real implications and validity of the Vietnamese images. And it arouses people's re-meditation on the American traditional culture and ideology, which are represented by the American self. At last, it puts forward the realistic importance of the research on American Vietnam War Literature.