Introduction
Dang Thuy Tram Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a captivating informative chef-d’oeuvre demonstrating the author’s love for his country based on the sorrowful situation that the country undergoing.
As young as 23 years, she associates with the communists party in her quest of ensuring that people of Vietnam do not go through what they goes through (National Library Board Para. 3). The American soldiers’ inhumanity and killings of the Vietnam citizens leaves her disturbed and therefore puts on spirited heart of ensuring that the people are liberated, a decision purely founded on her love for her people.
Love and Idealism
Dr. Dang makes the decision to go to the South Vietnam because of her love and youthful idealism she has for her kindred. Despite the deadly circumstances and appalling conditions that her patients undergo, she opts to make the dreadful decision.
She is a young and youthful woman who in spite of the deadly conditions vows or is ready to sacrifice her own life to secure the lives of the patients who have faced attacks and injuries from the America soldiers and the soldiers themselves. Her idealistic nature also plays a vital role in her decision to move to the South Vietnam. She is determined to see her country in peace despite her age. She aligns herself with the communists’ party.
She joins the ideology of the party just to ensure that their values and their rights as citizens of the Vietnam remain respected rather than being infringed on by other people. She condemns the killings and shootings of Vietnam locals on streets by the American soldiers.
It proves a very difficult and trying time especially when the war rages on, kills, and destroys people without valid reasons. Therefore, Dr Dang makes the choice of moving to South Vietnam to extend her hand in saving the lives of those injured. The courageous decision surrounded by much risk to her own life seems further founded on the sense of shared humanity.
Sense of Shared Humanity
She also makes her decision to move to South Vietnam because of her spirited heart of humanity and love and long for an end of the war and the sufferings and pains subjected to the citizens of Vietnam. Since she is a physician, she offers herself to assist the people who are shot and who fall victims in the course of the war (Dang 47). She succumbs to her death in the course of her service to the people of Vietnam.
This therefore demonstrates her sense of shared humanity in saving the lives of others while placing her own in danger. Her compassion and urge or wish to see the war end also makes her risk her own life to go to the South Vietnam. She wishes that the war and the fighting in South Vietnam ended allowing the people to have their peace and unity.
For instance, in the diary, she expresses her intimacy and love showing how she misses her mother and lover whom she refers to “M”. She yearns for the time that she will go back home and meet her mother who is in the Northern Vietnam (Guthrie 105). This therefore shows how the Doctor is concerned and optimistic that finally the war and the shootings will end.
Tram in the Current Vietnam
Though dead, Tram speaks volumes and volumes through the marks she left to the people of Vietnam. She has contributed significantly towards the making of the country’s history, as it stands today. It seems quite unfortunate that she succumbed to death at that tender age.
If she were alive to date, she would automatically qualify as one amongst the liberators and the heroes of Vietnam history, who assertively sacrificed not only their time, money, relationships, but also their own self solely to cultivate freedom to the Vietnamese citizen. Dr. Tram stands out as a liberator who from the evidence of her diary and documentations, shows that she had a vision and a great concern to her country.
She, although at a younger age, associates herself with politics by becoming a party of the communists. She is a woman who puts her country in front by sacrificing her own life.
She knows the dangers that will beget her by making a decision to go the South Vietnam to provide humanitarian assistance to the soldiers who are shot and injured in the course of the war knowing very well the dangers that faced her. She, despite of the dangers, travels to the South Vietnam.
Furthermore, she is worth acknowledging based on her thought and wish for an end of the inhumanity and brutalities that people of the Vietnam were going through. It proves rather sad as Tram expresses her sympathy and concerns by noting that the people of Vietnam remain subjected to invalid pains and sufferings despite their innocence.
Therefore, Dr. Tram passes for a hero and if she could be alive, she could have gone on the record for understanding and having the courage to liberate the people of Vietnam from the unnecessary pains and killings (Guthrie 106). She refers the Americans people to as merciless and thirsty of other people’s blood, descriptions that she notes bitterly and with sorrow.
It therefore sounds unfortunate that the people of Vietnam went through the pain that they went through. Therefore, in no doubt, Dr. Tram stands out as a true hero, whose tireless work stands remembered and appreciated by the Vietnamese who enjoys the freedom of today acknowledging the cost attached therein: It cost the lives of protagonists for instance Dr. Tram.
Conclusion
Based on the expositions made in the paper, it suffices to declare it a rather touching experience, for Dr. Tram, a young woman, to take such a serious life-threatening decision for the sake of liberating the people of Vietnam.
It brings to light the sorrows, pains and sufferings faced by people who seek to achieve a certain risky objective for instance fighting for freedom, as the case stands for Dr. Tram. Therefore, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace comes in as a rather fascinating masterwork, heavy-laden with touching message that reveals the need to have a shared sense of humanity by avoiding wars based on the agony and pain that come as a result.
Works Cited
Dang, Tram. Last Night I Dream of Peace. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.
Guthrie, John. Last Night I Dream of Peace by Dang Thuy Tram. Web California Literary Review, 13 Aug. 2007. Web.
National Library Board. Last Night I Dream of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, 2008. Web.