Writing Follow-up/Discussion

1. If you decide to have students share their writing with one another before discussing the film further, circle the students for a read-around. It's important that everyone be able to see one another. As they listen to each other's pieces, ask students to take notes on themes and images that recur in their writing.
   
   
2. The following are some possible discussion questions on their writing and on the film. To answer a number of these questions will require more historical context than is provided in the film. Ask students what else they would need to know in order to be more confident of their answers.
   
   
   • From our writing, what aspects of Regret to Inform made the deepest impression on us?
     
     
   • Did the film make us think differently about the Vietnamese people? How?
     
     
   • The Vietnamese call it The American War. What are all the ways in which it was, and is, The American War? What are the implications of people in the U.S. calling it the Vietnam War? How does that influence how people here think about the war?
     
     
   • When Barbara Sonneborn introduces why she chose to make Regret to Inform, she says, "The same unanswered questions that drew me to Vietnam made me want to meet other women who had lost their husbands as I had. Maybe by hearing their stories I could understand my own more deeply." What do you think she learned from journeying to Vietnam and from making the film? How did it change her?
     
     
   • What do we learn from the widows that we might not have learned from their husbands, had they survived to tell their own "war stories"?
     
     
   • Barbara Sonneborn's husband, Jeff Gurvitz, and other veterans said that they went to Vietnam to serve their country. Do you think they served their country?
     
     
   • What are some of the different reasons that American men chose to go to Vietnam? What do you think of these choices?
     
     
   • Who or what do you think is responsible for Jeff's death?
     
     
   • Diane Van Renselaar asks whether or not her husband was a murderer. What do you think? Were all combatants on all sides of the war murderers? Was Nguyen Thi Hong, the woman who fought with the National Liberation Front in the area where Jeff Gurvitz was killed, a murderer?
     
     
   • Le Thi Ngot says that her son asked her, "Why did my father die?" What should she tell him? What should American mothers tell their children who ask the same question?
     
     
   • At the end of the film, Nguyen Thi Hong says that we are on the road to healing, but that it is very difficult. What does it mean to heal the wounds of the war?
     
     
   • In the film, Norma Banks says, "It isn't just the war is here and it's over. It starts when it ends." In what ways did the war begin after it ended?
     
     
   • What did you see or hear in the film that leaves you hopeful? For example, how have people changed in positive ways following their experiences with the war?
     
     
   • How is what you see and hear in Regret to Inform different from what you had learned about the Vietnam War up to this point?
     
     
   • Does anything in the film remind you of other things you've studied this year? Does it remind you of anything else that's going on in the world today?
     
     
   • Talk about why you think the United States could or could not be drawn into another war like Vietnam.