After War and Reflections
Decades after the last U.S. troops withdrew, writers, critics, and creators continue to revisit the Vietnam War. This part examines how memory, trauma, and national narratives are negotiated in memoir, theory, journalism, and popular television. It also asks: when we build monuments and finales, what story are we trying to fix in place?
Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994)
Tobias Wolff’s memoir offers a candid account of his service in Vietnam, filled with uncertainty, self-critique, and moments of dark humor. This video explores how Wolff uses memory to revisit his younger self and the world that sent him to war.
Discussion Questions
- How does Wolff portray his younger self—as hero, victim, bystander, something else?
- Which moments of the memoir feel most unsettling or self-critical? Why do you think he includes them?
- How does Wolff portray his younger self—as hero, victim, bystander, something else?
- How does Wolff’s tone compare to the voices you’ve encountered earlier in the seminar, both during the war and in its immediate aftermath?
Tobias Wolff — Civilian
The discussion probes misunderstanding, masculinity, and moral injury; why a single sarcastic laugh ignites confrontation; and how spectators read the veteran as “pitiful.” Framed within our series on Vietnam War literature and campus protest memory (Mailer, Hall, Nguyen), this talk asks how veterans’ voices complicate narratives about 1960s activism—and what that means for how we remember protest today.
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Discussion Questions
- How does Wolff portray the veteran’s first encounter with campus life? Which details highlight the gap between his war experience and civilian students?
- How does Wolff’s narrative voice shape your understanding of this scene and of him as a returning veteran?
- How does Wolff portray the veteran’s first encounter with campus life? Which details highlight the gap between his war experience and civilian students?
- How would you define “civilian” here, and what does the scene suggest about veterans’ place on university campuses?
Viet Thanh Nguyen — Nothing Ever Dies – All Wars Are Fought Twice
From refugee experience and fractured diaspora memory to survivor’s guilt and PTSD, the discussion asks who gets to remember, how memory is transmitted (oral storytelling, letters, literature), and how monuments—especially Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial—turn personal grief into public remembrance.
Discussion Questions
- How does the setting or context shape the tensions between past experiences and present circumstances?
- What assumptions does the video invite you to question about identity, belonging, or responsibility, and how does it challenge those assumptions?
Viet Thanh Nguyen from The Sympathizer – Double Agent, Double Memory
Topics include who owns knowledge and memory, representation vs. authenticity, the politics of naming, and the “second war” fought in collective memory. We consider “Danny Boy,” assimilation and stage names, method acting, and why adding Vietnamese “roles” without Vietnamese storytellers still reproduces stereotype.
Discussion Questions
- What responsibilities, if any, do artists and filmmakers have when representing war, trauma, and other people’s stories?
- In what ways is the narrator a “double agent” on the film set, and how does that shape what we see?