Part 4, p. 106 - 135 Summary

The first part of this section is written in the third-person perspective and present tense as it narrates Kien's intense writing experience. It describes his working during the night, his sleeping during the day, the ridicule he faces from his neighbors, and his dreams of death. The next part of this section is written in the third-person perspective and past tense as he remembers an escape from political indoctrination at school with Phuong as well as more details of death and violence during the war. He has a sense of his impending death, but also a sense that this is not his time.

Kien's details his minimal recollections of his devotedly Communist mother and his expansive recollections of his troubled artist father. His father, Kien remembers, became despondent and self-isolated after Kien's mother left, drunkenly painting increasingly bizarre works...