Chapter Seven- A Different View- Unrepairable Damages

"Houses could be rebuilt and damaged dikes repaired- but the loss of our temples and shrines meant the death of our culture itself. It meant that a generation of children would grow up without fathers to teach them about their ancestors or the rituals of worship (195)." I thought this was a very significant epiphany in the chapter. When Le Ly went back to Ky La to visit her father and potentially raise Hung there, she had a very sickening feeling, as if she wasn't welcome in her home village. She had a "growing sense of dread" in the form of a lump in her throat when she realized that all of the chaos and pain and destruction that had happened in Ky La was in no comparison to the struggle the future generation would have with recovering everything lost during the war. The value of everything that was lost, all of the shrines and temples important to the village and to their religion, were all damaged to the point of irreversibility. There is a hiatus in history that people have to fill with stories, knowledge of the past, and traditions that they manage to remember. Even that would be a problem, as said by Le Ly, "[...] a generation of children would grow up without fathers to teach them about their ancestors or the rituals of worship." I think that this point is a painful epiphany to realize about one's home village. The thought that some of the village's most important and sacred memories and rituals would be forgotten is a depressing realization Le Ly had to see.