In Country Out of this World
What do you think about when CNN network flashes across the screen; one thousand dead in bombing raid in Iran? You are probably thinking, "Wow what a horrible thing to happen to those poor soldiers, what's for dinner?" It may be easy for the people on the home front to dismiss the incident, but for the soldiers that are present is not so easily overcome. Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country is a novel that deals with the Vietnam War on a personal level. It is told through the viewpoint of Sam Hughes, a teenage girl whose father was killed in Vietnam before she was born. Through her narration, readers learn that the Vietnam War affected everyone on some level, whether they were personally involved in it or not. Samantha Hughes's father died in Vietnam. Emmet Hughes, her uncle returned with deep scars from the experience. The novel centers on their close relationship; she tries to find out about her father and to understand the war; he is trying to create a life for himself. The story culminates in a trip they take to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. M*A*S*H was and still is a very popular television show. However, its popularity is often questioned in the manner of; is it popular because it's
As Sam drives home from the mall she angrily rejects her father and all his family, the whole Hughes clan. Sam, a bright-eyed girl who has a dark past, tries to piece her life together throughout the novel. Sam has discovered that her father, whom she has known only through pictures of a young, awkward boy, truly suffered, that the horrors of Vietnam were much worse than she could ever have imagined, even with her "morbid" imagination. Sam drives over the back roads to visit her father's parents' farm to get a diary he had kept in Vietnam before he was killed. Since he is out of her life she now has to drudge up memory after memory just because of her name. My family and I just went on a road trip to Virginia Beach. [and] a video-cassette recorder and a bedroom suit that cost a thousand dollars" 195. Through all of the traffic, horns, and people. It all came together at that moment. Sam replied, "I've never been to fancy a wedding". Although Sam had originally planned to spend the night with her grandparents, she makes a sudden decision to leave. During dinner, Sam's Aunt Donna and Mamaw talk about Donna's husband's sister who has just moved into a new brick house with "all its appliances. She hasn't seen her grandparents in two years. It attempts to go beyond the usual two opposing attitudes towards the Vietnam War, the one that insists it was honorable to go and fight and die, and the other which defines the war was a corrupt and violent attempt to force upon a poor colonized people. She walks through the fields along the fencerows, picking wildflowers, and then goes down to the creek before returning to the house.
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Acceptance Essays
