Women and Death in Vietnam War Novels

여성과 죽음: 베트남 전쟁소설을 중심으로

According to John Newman's Bibliography of Imaginative Works about American Fighting in Vietnam, there are 1370 entries up to 1996 which deal with the theme of Vietnam War in literature. Among various themes such as war and gender/race and ethnicity/class, this study makes an issue of the contiguity between femininity and death in Vietnam War novels written by Americans to investigate one of the bedrocks upon which the western civilization is founded. Female figures, especially Oriental females are seen as an emblem of death in the novels such as The Thirteenth Valley, Close Quarters, Body Count, and Bamboo Bed. It has been found out that this kind of death obsessive mode of thinking is deeply embedded in Western mentality and argued that its habitual mode needs to be changed.