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
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. Her rejection of his suffering leads to her rejection of him and his family and their decaying farmhouse with its smells of manure and dirt and sweat. 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. Passing old farms and country graveyards and "new house trailers perched on blocks in bare fields," she finally gets to the narrow land leading to the farm; 192. She hasn't seen her grandparents in two years. She has dinner with them (dinner is the mid-day meal in Kentucky). 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...[and] a video-cassette recorder and a bedroom suit that cost a thousand dollars" 195. After dinner, Sam walks over the farm, consciously trying to "see" the place where her father grew up, to see it the way he would have seen it and remembered it while he was in Vietnam. She walks through the fields along the fencerows, picking wildflowers, and then goes down to the creek before returning to the house. Mamaw has found the diary and gives it to Sam. Although Sam had originally planned to spend the night with her g
Some common words found in the essay are:
DC M*A*S*H, Sam Sam, Donna Mamaw, Vietnam Memorial, Vietnam War, World CNN, Lonnie Malone, Emmet Hughes, Virginia Beach, Sam Hughes, vietnam war, vietnam memorial, washington dc, sam drives,
Approximate Word count = 1037
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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