Which character did you feel the most sympathetic toward? The least? Is that different from which character you like the most and least?

Which character did you feel the most sympathetic toward? The least? Is that different from which character you like the most and least, and if so, why?

I felt the most sympathetic to Grandmother because family is so important to her. She is intelligent and quickly adapts to any situation. She had to leave the children behind for their own safety, but as soon as she could she found them and kept the family together. She never expressed the fear and danger to which she exposed herself to as a black market trader in order to keep her family fed and with basic necessities. I felt the least sympathetic to Sang who ate the food she cooked but shunned her to keep himself ingratiated to the Communists. Although he lost a wife and child, it seemed is if the universe tilted against him.

Although I also felt sympathetic to Grandma, my heart ached throughout this story for Huong (Guava) . Her heart wrenching, persistent search for her father and the inability of her mother to express love towards her after returning from the front lines struck me with incredible sadness for this child. Huong's heartache continued with Uncle Dat's story of his monstrous war experiences and culminated when he was able to confirm her worst fears about her father's fate.
I liked Grandma the most since she represented every quality of a family matriarch that I hold dear.
I really did not dislike any of the characters. I would like to believe that each family member coped the best they could with the emotional resources that they had at the time.

Grandma resonated with me because I know the importance of family relationships in Vietnam. I disliked Sang for his refusal to accept the food offerings that were given to him. I would not have gone back to his house more than twice after he refused the offerings.

I definitely sympathetically leaned towards the Grandma the most, her story the one most filled with the heartache of not only having bad things happen to her, but also having to make hard choices that took pieces of herself from herself.
Sang was the one I felt the least attached to because he suffered the least and acted the worst towards his family. The difference between the two was their perspective on war and sacrifice.
Wicked Ghost was also a stand out as a character that was just cruel for the sake of it.

As I grow older (now 71) and as life, now focused on our behavior during the pandemic, has shown expected and unexpected circumstances over the decades, I have discovered that we must be generous toward our fellow human beings. Life under the best of curcumstances can be a challenge but when war is in the mix who reall
knows how they will behave.
I feel the most sympathetic toward Huong (Guava) because her inward struggles were so beautifully expressed and confliting. Grandmother is heroic, almost superwoman, and she is the one we all want as a family matriarch during these unimaginable trials. That said, although personal actions were often not noble or even kind, I sympathize with all the characters who live in this hellish world.