Week 9 Analysis: Close reading of "The Tale of Kieu"

For my close reading this week I decided to write about a stanza at the end of page 563 of "The Tale of Kieu" beginning with "pity the child." The full sentence is "pity the child, so young and so naive-- / misfortune, like a storm, swooped down on her" (562). This sentence repeats the idea that Dam Tien had already told Kieu earlier. Dam Tien told her how she's doomed by fate to grief. All throughout the poem we see Kieu go through a miserable life. She had lost her virginity by being forced into prostitution and was lied to back to back as she had been sold to different people. Some people claimed they would help her, but it was always a lie and she would be sold to someone else to work as a prostitute in their brothel or have to do other labor. She's "young and naive" because of how she still has some of her innocence. She doesn't fully understand love from personal experience when Kim decides that they should be together and it's her first major learning experience relating to love and relationships. All of that was ruined with the prostitute lifestyle that was forced upon her. She was ripped away from her lover and family and considered suicide multiple times. She kept a knife with her in case she ever decided to go through with it. The following sentence in the stanza reinforces the things I've just said: "To part from Kim meant sorrow, death in life-- / would she still care for life, much less for love?" (563). She did struggle with having a desire to live, and she was full of sorrow, but she did give love another chance. She fell in love with Tu Hai and had a fulfilling relationship with him that allowed her to get revenge on those who have wronged her. She indirectly got him killed when she encouraged him to seek war less and caused him to drop his guard and be ambushed. His death was the breaking point for her since it caused her to finally attempt suicide. She tried to drown herself. The stanza ends with "A raindrop does not brood on its poor fate: / a leaf of grass repays three months of spring" (563). In this metaphor, the raindrop is Kieu. While she might have a poor fate, her life and all of the pain that comes along with the depressing portion of her story did repay her her with a superfluous amount of "spring." Her suffering ends at the end of the story and she is reunited with her family and gets to marry Kim after all. They build a shrine and the rest of her life is no longer one full of harm and lies.


Du, Ngyuen. "The Tale of Kieu." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. D, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 546-586