Chapter 3: Open Wounds

In chapter three, Le Ly goes from village hero to trator. She is captured by Republicans while hiding in a trench and taken to My Thi for interrogation. Her mother bribed an official to get Le Ly out of the My Thi. Le Ly being released from the My Thi in three days raises suspicions of the Viet Cong. As she was walking to the fields to work, Repbulican soldiers followed her and killed two Viet Cong. Le Ly was then taken by Loi and Mau, two Viet Cong, to a swamp. They questioned her, and their assignment was to kill Le Ly; however Loi raped Le Ly.

"Curiously, despite the paralyzing fear I had felt only moments before, I now longed for the bullet that slept in Loi's rifle."

The personification shown above explains                      
Le Ly's dispair and loss of hope. Rape took
away her fight for life. Her feelings of shame
and dishonor prompted Le Ly to not value
her life as she did before; it did not matter to
her whether she was arrested, raped, or
killed by anyone.

The number of rape victims in the U.S. have decreased the last ten to twenty years. However, it is still a crime harmful to women and children in our society. For statistics visit <http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm>