I kept waiting, waiting for the altercation to happen… for
ACTION. This is both the blessing and the curse of the book…the waiting… “it’s
gotta be on the next page…” So you keep reading with anticipation, with hope
and one ultimately ends up with no closure.
And maybe this is like Vietnam, never closed. Lives ruined without
definition, without reason, families uprooted in spirit, young men with open
wounds for the rest of their lives, young men who can’t close the box on a Pandora
like guilt from actions they didn’t think they could commit…
And while our hero
stays in country in her own swamp to show her toughness, it is her uncle who
captures the essence when explaining his lack of a job, lack of a meaningful
relationship says that looking at birds and watching MASH reruns is “all he can
handle.”
Can post-Vietnam war people understand this? Sure, the hero wants
people to tell her but isn’t it the case that while she can spend the night in
her swamp, she can never stand in the shoes…never truly empathize.
So are we left with this question after reading In Country: can one understand if one
can’t empathize?
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