Advances in Language and Literary Studies Vol. 4 No. 2; July 2013 Copyright © Australian International Academic Centre, Australia Fiction and Philosophy in Novel Without a Name and the Disappeared Roya Jabarouti (corresponding author) Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia E-mail: roya.jabarouti@gmail.com Gabriel Clement Chua Chen Wei Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia Manimangai Mani Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.4n.2p.1 Received: 01/04/2013 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.4n.2p.1 Accepted: 05/06/2013 Abstract While Duong Thu Hung’s Novel Without a Name (1995) describes the bloodshed in the jungles of central Vietnam towards the end of Vietnam War (1959-1975), Kim Echlin embarks her narrations in The Disappeared (2009), about a decade after the collapse of Pol Pot’s genocide (1975-1979) in Cambodia. Philosophy however, is waved into fiction in order to add layers of depth and meaning to their narrations. Role of ideology and its effect on human life are among the major themes discussed by the authors. This study employs a close study of the above texts to discover the philosophical phrases used by the authors. It also illustrates how philosophy enhances meaning in fiction and contributes to its authenticity. Keywords: Fiction, Philosophy, Vietnam War, Pol Pot Regime, Ideology, Humanity 1. Introduction Duong Thu Hong’s Novel Without A Name was published in 1995 in the United States (Huong, 1996). The novel is banned in her home country of Vietnam for rendering the day-to-day realities of the Vietnam War from 1973 to 1975. It specifically focuses on the conditions of individual Vietnamese soldiers towards the end of this war, in the jungles of central Vietnam. The narrator-protagonist is Quant, a 28-year old officer who has abandoned everything to enlist in the army at the age of 18, full of ideals and promises of communism. However, after years of leading his platoon through all the atrocities during the war he feels disillusioned. On his journey back home, he undergoes an agonizing solitary odyssey that opens a new angle to the promises and realities of war. Not surprisingly, he returns to the community of his comrades, as if only to say: “It’s too bad that I have learned the truth, I won’t be able to see things in the same way anymore”(Huong, 1996, p.276). The 2009 novel The Disappeared by Kim Echlin, also published in the U.S., is somewhat like a continuation of Novel without Name. It touches on similar themes albeit set in a different time, place and culture. In this novel, Echlin utilises the unconditional power of love as a leitmotif to express the unforgettable smells and memories of the Khmer Rouge in contemporary Cambodia. Anne the Canadian narrator-protagonist meets the Cambodian Sere in Montreal, where the two fall deeply in love. Nevertheless, Sere decides to leave his Oan Samlanh, Anne (Echlin, 2009, p.43) when the Cambodian borders are opened following the end of Pol Pot’s regime in 1979, to find about his family and country. Ten years later, Anne also sets off for the same destination in search of her Borng Samlanh (Echlin, 2009, p.43), her beloved country and Sere(Echlin, 2009, p.203). She walks down the streets and into the ruins, watching and listening to ordinary Cambodians in Phnom Penh. Thirty years later, Anne writes down what she remembers. Anne is in many respects Echlin’s mouthpiece to foreground the prolonged trauma suffered by many Cambodians in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s brutal regime, even as their country progresses slowly into a peaceful constitutional monarchy. This is profoundly reflected in the words Anne says upon her return: “I had to push again to get rid of the afterbirth, but this word is wrong because it was after death”(Echlin, 2009, p.150). In both novels, however, the souls of the unnamed disappeared are still wandering and their voices can still be heard, by the authors. The authors write their words, so as to avoid the criminality of silence (Echlin, 2009, p.221). 2. Weaving Philosophy into Narration In the combination of philosophy and literature, there is a literary interpretation of the ideas of philosophers as well as a philosophical treatment of literature. Plato was the one who invented and legitimized the term philosophy and perhaps the first one who practiced his philosophical ideas in the form of dialogues between fictionalized characters. However,