"A Man of Two Faces and Two Minds": Just Memory and Metatextuality in The Sympathizer's Rewriting of the Vietnam War

Abstract:Vietnam War narratives typically adopt a limited perspective that Viet Thanh Nguyen, in his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), terms "unjust memory," which recalls the past from a self-serving position that remembers the self as human and other as inhuman. In contrast, Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer (2015) represents the war from a more inclusive perspective that Nguyen calls "just memory," which strives to recognize the shared humanity and inhumanity of the self and other. This essay critically examines The Sympathizer as a literary companion to Nothing Ever Dies, arguing that its metatextual qualities shape its project of rewriting the history of the war from the lens of just memory. By employing meta-textual techniques, such as characterizing the narrator as a figure of duality, featuring a nested narrative form, and self-referentially exploring the performativity of writing, The Sympathizer reveals that language and memory can be manipulated to construct varying versions of "truth." In doing so, The Sympathizer suggests that in order to build a more just world, we must first recognize the potential limitations and possibilities of narrative, which can be either weaponized to justify violence or engaged to imagine a future free of war.