Sam throughout the book is trying to learn more and more about her father who she never knew. She wants to know who he was and tries to find out more about by learning what life was like at war. One simple way she learns about war is by watching M.A.S.H. which was a TV show created during the Vietnam War as a response to the war. Another way she learns about war is by spending time with her Uncle Emmett’s war buddies in an attempt to find out from them what their experiences in Vietnam were like. One time she does spends time with them is when she goes to veterans’ party and talks to Tom about the different war models that are at the party. The clearest example of her wanting to learn about her father and war is when she tries to experience what her father described in his journal by running away and camping out in the swamps near her house. Her want to know more about her father eventually leads her to go to the Vietnam Memorial where she finds some closure over what happened with her father.
Nick, at the risk of being overly argumentative, I'm not sure if it is "closure" she finds at the end. I think that idea/word is a bit overused to describe a state of change that people go through following a difficult time. The image of flames that rises up at the end of the novel is a powerful but imprecise one; does it symbolize Sam as a phoenix or as another burned out vet? At any rate, I love the end of this novel (even if some of the middle is a bit rough) because it is unclear whether or not she achieved that elusive "closure."
From the moment we are born, the people whom we spend time with affect our development. For most of us, this is most immediately apparent in the way our parents have raised us. If your parents emphasize the need for honesty and kindness in the home, then it is more likely that even as an adult, the child will value these traits. However, Sam was really only raised by her mother, and therefore is psychologically ‘missing’ half of the behavioral input she would have received as a child. It was, of course, filled in by other people like her Uncle Emmet, but as she passes through a tumultuous adolescence, she is feeling this loss acutely, and searches to fill the unnerving gap in herself by replicating her father’s actions, in order to somehow imprint on herself his beliefs and ideals, therefore replicating the influence he would have had on her as a child. (Oh snap, this is starting to sound pretty psychological.) While she obviously can never replace being raised by a father with these experiences, they make her feel more comfortable with herself and her identity as her father’s child. I believe she is still going to struggle with this her whole life, and that her trip to the Vietnam Memorial wasn’t an ending so much as another attempt to relate to her father, like camping in the swamp and reading his journal and letters. Therefore I think it’s safe to say that she did not find what she was looking for, in fact what she is looking for is literally impossible for her to grasp. However, it could be argued that even she is not aware exactly why she is doing this, believing, as many readers would, that it is simply out of a curiosity about her heritage.
Sam is looking for her identity. In her daily life Sam feels incredibly responsible for the situations around her. After purchasing her VW and driving Emmett around own she feels confronted by the many conflicts in her life: “Maybe she was going nuts. It wasn’t just Tom. Or Emmett. Or Lonnie. Or Dawn’s predicament. It was her. She was at the center of all these impossible predicaments” (178). Sam is incredibly selfish, not in malicious way, she simply views herself as “the center”. Her life at home weighs so heavily on her, and thus she looks for an out in Vietnam. Sam also sees her life in black and white. Her situation is “impossible, not difficult. She is confronted with gray throughout this novel, and eventually comes to some terms with the nature of being. Sam’s head often “spins in the dark”, this dark is representative of the gray that plagues her. She loves Tom in the dark, the only light from the bathroom and cigarettes. Tom’s sexual presence is intensely of Sam’s world, but his defunct equipment is undeniably Vietnam’s doing. She manages to see him as the exception in her perception of Vietnam: in her later disgust towards the veterans he remains likable. In her struggle she is always one or the other. After the veteran’s dance she reels in tom’s appartement: “Sam’s head was whirling---clockwise or counterclockwise?”(126). Again gray plagues her, the world is begging to be defined. Sam’s world is divided. Vietnam and Kentucky. The 60’s and the 70’s. Men and women. Her and everyone else. When Sam speaks of Emmett’s pimples she almost always says she “thinks its agent orange” She comes before his wellbeing. Sam is concerned over her own identity, and how much of it was lost in her father’s death. The origin of her name holds significance to her, she corrects her mother, telling her it did matter that she never told sam the makings of her name. She confronts this gray in the swamp, chills coursing through her body when she realizes that both men and women kill babies. But this does not offer her resolution, but rather leaves her dazed and confused, “waiting for her mind to clear”(229). One must wonder what her mind is clearing of, gray fog, or the notions of black and white? Sam does not find her identity, she is left, her world as polarized as ever at the end of the novel. Mamaw takes her picture and her face is “all shadow” (p.244): she herself is gray, unsure of her identity. What Sam does find is some interconnectivity: that the white carnation might bloom out of the black memorial. Her worlds connect through her, her name being found on the Vietnam memorial.
One correction: When Sam speaks of Emmett pimples she almost always says she "thinks its agent orange"Her opinion is values as highly as Emmett's wellbeing.
I believe that the symbolism at the end of the book, such as the flames that Mr.Bubar mentions, do suggest that Sam found closure. Sam first compares herself to a bird which is searching for food, but a bird will fly away when it is done. She is looking for her father’s name the same way the bird is looking for food, and she will then leave once she finds what she needs. Later, Sam compares herself to “a spindly weed that is sprouting up from this diamond-bright seam of hard earth”. The hard earth could be her search to know her father, but she has found closure and can now grow. The flames could indeed mean a phoenix which sheds its old body and starts a new. A phoenix suggests that she has left her old life and decided to move on. Flames can also burn down things, but then there is land for new things to grow or be built. All these symbols suggest that Sam has found closure and can move on with her life.
The relationship between a child and a parent is the most basic of human connections. Children look up to their parents for answers and guidance. In Bobbie Mason’s In Country, Sam’s father is killed during the Vietnam War before she is born. Having been denied the opportunity to meet her father, Sam is searching to know him and to fill the void created by his loss. In order to learn about her father, Sam reads and researches about war, especially in Vietnam. “She got bogged down in manifestos and State Department Documents.” (P.55) She watches MASH, listens to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and teaches herself about the military and its equipment such as Agent Orange. At seventeen, Sam should be watching current TV shows and reading novels. Instead, she is trying to understand what Vietnam was like in order to better understand her father. Sam should also be out partying with friends from school, rather than socializing with veterans who were the peers of her father. Her desperation to know her father is revealed while at a dance where she meets a veteran who knew her father. “Oh tell me what you remember! What else?”… “What was he like?”… “’What else?’ It was maddening that no one knew anything but the obvious.” (P.118-119) Her continued pressing of the stranger for answers and the use of the word “maddening” to describe her feelings when she does not receive any new details shows her determination to know about her father. Sam’s relationship with Emmett also reflects her desire to understand her father. Her closeness to Emmett is symbolized by the stamp collection they kept when she was little. This is an activity a daughter might engage in with her father. While the two pasted stamps, Emmett told her about the war, “Sam had a picture of Vietnam in her mind from Emmett’s stories- a pleasant countryside, something like Florida, with beaches and watery fields of rice and mountains. The sky was crowded with wonderful aircraft…” (P.51) While she is a child, Emmett fills Sam’s mind with depictions of war that are fantasy. Even if the stories are not accurate, Sam looks to Emmett as a source of information. Importantly, it is Emmett who tells Sam that her father picked her name. “‘Your daddy was the one who named you Samantha,’ Emmett said. ‘Hey what do you mean?’ …‘Dwayne wrote Irene once and said that he wanted to name you Samantha because it was his favorite name.’… ‘I never knew that.’” (P.53) Emmett’s memory of the fact that her father chose her name gives Sam a clear link to her father. Even though she never met him, she knows that he cared about her. Furthermore, it is Emmett who explains her father’s journal. Having read her father’s diary, Sam is angry. “‘I hate him. He was awful, the way he talked about gooks and killing.’ Emmett shook her by the shoulders, jostling her until her teeth rattled. ‘Look here, little girl. He could have been me. All of us, it was the same.’” (P.221-222) Emmett defends Sam’s father by explaining to her that he was just like the other soldiers, forced to do the things he described in his diary. By sharing his memories of Vietnam and her father, Emmett brings Sam closer to understanding her own life’s history. The title of the book signifies that Sam’s mission is to understand what her father experienced. “In Country” is a term used by the military to refer to the danger zone, especially in Vietnam. Sam runs away from home to the swamps to get a better understanding of what life was like for the troops in the jungles of Vietnam. “Some Vets blamed what they did on the horror of the jungle. What did the jungle do to them? Humping the Boonies. Here I am, she thought. In Country.” (P.210) Sam goes to the closest thing to a jungle that she can find in order to try to experience firsthand what her father’s life must have been like in Vietnam. Sam finds what she is looking for. She comes to understand her father. When she visits the Vietnam Memorial, she finds her father’s name as well as her own. This is a solid symbol that she is connected to her father.
Throughout this novel, Sam believes that she is searching for a connection with her father, but really without fully knowing what she is doing, she is truly searching for her own sense of identity. Sam uses the excuse of finding out more about her father and the horrors that went on during the Vietnam War as an unconscious way of finding out more about herself. Throughout the novel Sam is practically obsessed with the war in Vietnam, where not only her father died before she was born, but also where her Uncle Emmett served. This obsession grows and grows throughout the novel, but is only a cover for what she is really searching for: herself. Sam spends nearly the whole novel confused about what she really wants from not only others, but from herself as well. Sam beings the novel thinking that she is perfectly content with her relationship with Lonnie, but as the novel progresses her opinion begins to change. She meets Tom and becomes involved in an undefined and tumultuous relationship with him, but she is still never satisfied. Often when people cannot fix or find their own sense of security with their life, they turn to the lives of others. Sam spends all of her time focusing on Emmett and his pimples and constant PTSD and Tom with his broken sense of self and past instead of focusing on fixing her own issues. Sam only wants to spend time with others who are broken, so that she does not have to focus on just how broken she is. What Sam does not realize is that without ones own sense of direction it is next to impossible to find the directions of others. Sam believes that with finding out more about her father, she will find out more about herself. When she finds his notebook from Vietnam at her grandparent’s house, she believes that she has found all of the answers to what she has spent so long searching for. She is more than disappointed not to find what she was looking for. Sam believed that by reading this journal, all of her unanswered questions about her father and herself, but when what she reads is the exact opposite of what she wanted to see, she is more than shocked. “I hate him. He was awful, the way he talked about gooks and killing” (221). Sam spends so much time focusing on the lives of others thinking that by fixing their lives; hers will be fixed as well. In the end of the novel, Sam does not end up finding what she has searched for. I think that she is not as satisfied with the feeling that she gets after seeing her father’s name upon the memorial. Sam only began the journey to finding her own identity at the end of the novel, but did not find what she thought she would.
Jeremy, is Sam really selfish or is she trying to get the attention that she never had. Emmett and her mom are always focused on something or someone else. His or her focus it seems is always directed towards anyone but Sam. Irene shows a small level of care for her, but with a new husband, town, and baby, she lives an entirely different life. Though Emmett cares about Sam and loves her in his own way, he is constantly struggling with his own internal Vietnam and is therefore never really able to devote himself to taking care of her. It seems as if at a very young age, Sam was entirely on her own. Though I do think you’re right about most of Sam’s personality, I don’t necessarily agree with you that Sam is selfish. I think that most of the people in her life are incredibly selfish and have never really paid much attention to Sam’s wants and needs. From the young age of a child she has been forced to revolve her life around Emmett and Irene, but rarely does it seem that their worlds revolved around her. Every young child needs some form of constant attention and love, and it seems that Sam was lacking a lot of that in her youth, which is why she tries to compensate with juggling both Tom and Lonnie.
I just want to ask, am I the only one who found Sam really irritating? I thought the way she behaved when she finally found out about the war was unacceptable. She has been harassing these poor veterans for how long, bothering them to recall incredibly painful memories, berating them when they don't satisfy her, and when she finally finds out what the was was really like, she flips out, calls them monsters, and runs away to hide in a swamp. This is why nobody told you anything, sweetheart. I understand, like most people have said, that she obviously has some Daddy issues, but her character as a whole just really bothered me.
Anne, Simply because Sam's situation is conducive to her needing attention( which unarguably she does need, although perhaps not deserves) it does not mean she has not been selfish. I do not use selfish as a derogatory term,but rather as a state of being. As Lizzy so aptly put it: she has been entirely oblivious, perhaps even neglectful, to the blatant discomfort she puts these veterans in.Every bit of information away from truth upsets her. When visting Pap and Mamaw Sam is angered by the lack of detail in the information Pap has given her:"...when they talked about Dwayne they weren't specific. You should always be specific Sam thought"(199). Sam is clearly setting definitions for the actions of others, demonstrating her selfish nature. She does not state her frustration in means of what she needs, but rather what others must do to satisfy her.She paints others black in terms of their deeds: "YOU SHOULD ALWAYS be specific." She wants in shoulds and states what "you"( not herself) ought always be. Sam wants the world to conform to her desires. When Sam eventually comes around to the terrible reality of the war, as portrayed in her fathers journal, she reacts in disgust. She is hardly satisfied by that knowledge, but rather dissatisfied by what that realization has not given her: peace and love. Life has disappointed her, she is not disappointed in life.I do not mean this as some sort of treatise on the faults of Sam's character, there are some lovely people in the world who are selfish, it is human nature, Sam is simply more so as she has lacked the affection given by others. Therefore, she has learned to focus on her own wants first.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=vietnam+memorial&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=690&tbm=isch&prmd=ivnsm&tbnid=5IHP60r65SmFuM:&imgrefurl=http://www.usmarinetankers.org/in-memoriam/vietnammemorial_lopes/&docid=3TNFvetggSfzyM&w=535&h=339&ei=RmRpTqzHOsjDgQfrr4WCBg&zoom=1 I wonder how this connects to some of your thoughts about Sam's changes over the course of the novel and her selfishness, because as a physical object the wall forces reflection upon it's visitors. Does Mason's choice to end the novel in this place symbolize/signify anything important ab out Sam?
Sam throughout the book is trying to learn more and more about her father who she never knew. She wants to know who he was and tries to find out more about by learning what life was like at war. One simple way she learns about war is by watching M.A.S.H. which was a TV show created during the Vietnam War as a response to the war. Another way she learns about war is by spending time with her Uncle Emmett’s war buddies in an attempt to find out from them what their experiences in Vietnam were like. One time she does spends time with them is when she goes to veterans’ party and talks to Tom about the different war models that are at the party. The clearest example of her wanting to learn about her father and war is when she tries to experience what her father described in his journal by running away and camping out in the swamps near her house. Her want to know more about her father eventually leads her to go to the Vietnam Memorial where she finds some closure over what happened with her father.
ReplyDeleteNick, at the risk of being overly argumentative, I'm not sure if it is "closure" she finds at the end. I think that idea/word is a bit overused to describe a state of change that people go through following a difficult time. The image of flames that rises up at the end of the novel is a powerful but imprecise one; does it symbolize Sam as a phoenix or as another burned out vet? At any rate, I love the end of this novel (even if some of the middle is a bit rough) because it is unclear whether or not she achieved that elusive "closure."
ReplyDeleteFrom the moment we are born, the people whom we spend time with affect our development. For most of us, this is most immediately apparent in the way our parents have raised us. If your parents emphasize the need for honesty and kindness in the home, then it is more likely that even as an adult, the child will value these traits. However, Sam was really only raised by her mother, and therefore is psychologically ‘missing’ half of the behavioral input she would have received as a child. It was, of course, filled in by other people like her Uncle Emmet, but as she passes through a tumultuous adolescence, she is feeling this loss acutely, and searches to fill the unnerving gap in herself by replicating her father’s actions, in order to somehow imprint on herself his beliefs and ideals, therefore replicating the influence he would have had on her as a child. (Oh snap, this is starting to sound pretty psychological.)
ReplyDeleteWhile she obviously can never replace being raised by a father with these experiences, they make her feel more comfortable with herself and her identity as her father’s child. I believe she is still going to struggle with this her whole life, and that her trip to the Vietnam Memorial wasn’t an ending so much as another attempt to relate to her father, like camping in the swamp and reading his journal and letters. Therefore I think it’s safe to say that she did not find what she was looking for, in fact what she is looking for is literally impossible for her to grasp. However, it could be argued that even she is not aware exactly why she is doing this, believing, as many readers would, that it is simply out of a curiosity about her heritage.
Sam is looking for her identity. In her daily life Sam feels incredibly responsible for the situations around her. After purchasing her VW and driving Emmett around own she feels confronted by the many conflicts in her life: “Maybe she was going nuts. It wasn’t just Tom. Or Emmett. Or Lonnie. Or Dawn’s predicament. It was her. She was at the center of all these impossible predicaments” (178). Sam is incredibly selfish, not in malicious way, she simply views herself as “the center”. Her life at home weighs so heavily on her, and thus she looks for an out in Vietnam. Sam also sees her life in black and white. Her situation is “impossible, not difficult. She is confronted with gray throughout this novel, and eventually comes to some terms with the nature of being. Sam’s head often “spins in the dark”, this dark is representative of the gray that plagues her. She loves Tom in the dark, the only light from the bathroom and cigarettes. Tom’s sexual presence is intensely of Sam’s world, but his defunct equipment is undeniably Vietnam’s doing. She manages to see him as the exception in her perception of Vietnam: in her later disgust towards the veterans he remains likable. In her struggle she is always one or the other. After the veteran’s dance she reels in tom’s appartement: “Sam’s head was whirling---clockwise or counterclockwise?”(126). Again gray plagues her, the world is begging to be defined. Sam’s world is divided. Vietnam and Kentucky. The 60’s and the 70’s. Men and women. Her and everyone else. When Sam speaks of Emmett’s pimples she almost always says she “thinks its agent orange” She comes before his wellbeing. Sam is concerned over her own identity, and how much of it was lost in her father’s death. The origin of her name holds significance to her, she corrects her mother, telling her it did matter that she never told sam the makings of her name. She confronts this gray in the swamp, chills coursing through her body when she realizes that both men and women kill babies. But this does not offer her resolution, but rather leaves her dazed and confused, “waiting for her mind to clear”(229). One must wonder what her mind is clearing of, gray fog, or the notions of black and white? Sam does not find her identity, she is left, her world as polarized as ever at the end of the novel. Mamaw takes her picture and her face is “all shadow” (p.244): she herself is gray, unsure of her identity. What Sam does find is some interconnectivity: that the white carnation might bloom out of the black memorial. Her worlds connect through her, her name being found on the Vietnam memorial.
ReplyDeleteOne correction: When Sam speaks of Emmett pimples she almost always says she "thinks its agent orange"Her opinion is values as highly as Emmett's wellbeing.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the symbolism at the end of the book, such as the flames that Mr.Bubar mentions, do suggest that Sam found closure. Sam first compares herself to a bird which is searching for food, but a bird will fly away when it is done. She is looking for her father’s name the same way the bird is looking for food, and she will then leave once she finds what she needs. Later, Sam compares herself to “a spindly weed that is sprouting up from this diamond-bright seam of hard earth”. The hard earth could be her search to know her father, but she has found closure and can now grow. The flames could indeed mean a phoenix which sheds its old body and starts a new. A phoenix suggests that she has left her old life and decided to move on. Flames can also burn down things, but then there is land for new things to grow or be built. All these symbols suggest that Sam has found closure and can move on with her life.
ReplyDeleteThe relationship between a child and a parent is the most basic of human connections. Children look up to their parents for answers and guidance. In Bobbie Mason’s In Country, Sam’s father is killed during the Vietnam War before she is born. Having been denied the opportunity to meet her father, Sam is searching to know him and to fill the void created by his loss.
ReplyDeleteIn order to learn about her father, Sam reads and researches about war, especially in Vietnam. “She got bogged down in manifestos and State Department Documents.” (P.55) She watches MASH, listens to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and teaches herself about the military and its equipment such as Agent Orange. At seventeen, Sam should be watching current TV shows and reading novels. Instead, she is trying to understand what Vietnam was like in order to better understand her father.
Sam should also be out partying with friends from school, rather than socializing with veterans who were the peers of her father. Her desperation to know her father is revealed while at a dance where she meets a veteran who knew her father.
“Oh tell me what you remember! What else?”…
“What was he like?”…
“’What else?’ It was maddening that no one knew anything but the obvious.” (P.118-119)
Her continued pressing of the stranger for answers and the use of the word “maddening” to describe her feelings when she does not receive any new details shows her determination to know about her father.
Sam’s relationship with Emmett also reflects her desire to understand her father. Her closeness to Emmett is symbolized by the stamp collection they kept when she was little. This is an activity a daughter might engage in with her father. While the two pasted stamps, Emmett told her about the war, “Sam had a picture of Vietnam in her mind from Emmett’s stories- a pleasant countryside, something like Florida, with beaches and watery fields of rice and mountains. The sky was crowded with wonderful aircraft…” (P.51) While she is a child, Emmett fills Sam’s mind with depictions of war that are fantasy. Even if the stories are not accurate, Sam looks to Emmett as a source of information. Importantly, it is Emmett who tells Sam that her father picked her name.
“‘Your daddy was the one who named you Samantha,’ Emmett said.
‘Hey what do you mean?’
…‘Dwayne wrote Irene once and said that he wanted to name you Samantha because it was his favorite name.’…
‘I never knew that.’” (P.53)
Emmett’s memory of the fact that her father chose her name gives Sam a clear link to her father. Even though she never met him, she knows that he cared about her. Furthermore, it is Emmett who explains her father’s journal. Having read her father’s diary, Sam is angry.
“‘I hate him. He was awful, the way he talked about gooks and killing.’
Emmett shook her by the shoulders, jostling her until her teeth rattled. ‘Look here, little girl. He could have been me. All of us, it was the same.’” (P.221-222)
Emmett defends Sam’s father by explaining to her that he was just like the other soldiers, forced to do the things he described in his diary. By sharing his memories of Vietnam and her father, Emmett brings Sam closer to understanding her own life’s history.
The title of the book signifies that Sam’s mission is to understand what her father experienced. “In Country” is a term used by the military to refer to the danger zone, especially in Vietnam. Sam runs away from home to the swamps to get a better understanding of what life was like for the troops in the jungles of Vietnam. “Some Vets blamed what they did on the horror of the jungle. What did the jungle do to them? Humping the Boonies. Here I am, she thought. In Country.” (P.210) Sam goes to the closest thing to a jungle that she can find in order to try to experience firsthand what her father’s life must have been like in Vietnam.
Sam finds what she is looking for. She comes to understand her father. When she visits the Vietnam Memorial, she finds her father’s name as well as her own. This is a solid symbol that she is connected to her father.
Throughout this novel, Sam believes that she is searching for a connection with her father, but really without fully knowing what she is doing, she is truly searching for her own sense of identity. Sam uses the excuse of finding out more about her father and the horrors that went on during the Vietnam War as an unconscious way of finding out more about herself. Throughout the novel Sam is practically obsessed with the war in Vietnam, where not only her father died before she was born, but also where her Uncle Emmett served. This obsession grows and grows throughout the novel, but is only a cover for what she is really searching for: herself. Sam spends nearly the whole novel confused about what she really wants from not only others, but from herself as well. Sam beings the novel thinking that she is perfectly content with her relationship with Lonnie, but as the novel progresses her opinion begins to change. She meets Tom and becomes involved in an undefined and tumultuous relationship with him, but she is still never satisfied. Often when people cannot fix or find their own sense of security with their life, they turn to the lives of others. Sam spends all of her time focusing on Emmett and his pimples and constant PTSD and Tom with his broken sense of self and past instead of focusing on fixing her own issues. Sam only wants to spend time with others who are broken, so that she does not have to focus on just how broken she is. What Sam does not realize is that without ones own sense of direction it is next to impossible to find the directions of others. Sam believes that with finding out more about her father, she will find out more about herself. When she finds his notebook from Vietnam at her grandparent’s house, she believes that she has found all of the answers to what she has spent so long searching for. She is more than disappointed not to find what she was looking for. Sam believed that by reading this journal, all of her unanswered questions about her father and herself, but when what she reads is the exact opposite of what she wanted to see, she is more than shocked. “I hate him. He was awful, the way he talked about gooks and killing” (221). Sam spends so much time focusing on the lives of others thinking that by fixing their lives; hers will be fixed as well. In the end of the novel, Sam does not end up finding what she has searched for. I think that she is not as satisfied with the feeling that she gets after seeing her father’s name upon the memorial. Sam only began the journey to finding her own identity at the end of the novel, but did not find what she thought she would.
ReplyDeleteJeremy, is Sam really selfish or is she trying to get the attention that she never had. Emmett and her mom are always focused on something or someone else. His or her focus it seems is always directed towards anyone but Sam. Irene shows a small level of care for her, but with a new husband, town, and baby, she lives an entirely different life. Though Emmett cares about Sam and loves her in his own way, he is constantly struggling with his own internal Vietnam and is therefore never really able to devote himself to taking care of her. It seems as if at a very young age, Sam was entirely on her own. Though I do think you’re right about most of Sam’s personality, I don’t necessarily agree with you that Sam is selfish. I think that most of the people in her life are incredibly selfish and have never really paid much attention to Sam’s wants and needs. From the young age of a child she has been forced to revolve her life around Emmett and Irene, but rarely does it seem that their worlds revolved around her. Every young child needs some form of constant attention and love, and it seems that Sam was lacking a lot of that in her youth, which is why she tries to compensate with juggling both Tom and Lonnie.
ReplyDeleteI just want to ask, am I the only one who found Sam really irritating? I thought the way she behaved when she finally found out about the war was unacceptable. She has been harassing these poor veterans for how long, bothering them to recall incredibly painful memories, berating them when they don't satisfy her, and when she finally finds out what the was was really like, she flips out, calls them monsters, and runs away to hide in a swamp. This is why nobody told you anything, sweetheart. I understand, like most people have said, that she obviously has some Daddy issues, but her character as a whole just really bothered me.
ReplyDeleteAnne, Simply because Sam's situation is conducive to her needing attention( which unarguably she does need, although perhaps not deserves) it does not mean she has not been selfish. I do not use selfish as a derogatory term,but rather as a state of being. As Lizzy so aptly put it: she has been entirely oblivious, perhaps even neglectful, to the blatant discomfort she puts these veterans in.Every bit of information away from truth upsets her. When visting Pap and Mamaw Sam is angered by the lack of detail in the information Pap has given her:"...when they talked about Dwayne they weren't specific. You should always be specific Sam thought"(199). Sam is clearly setting definitions for the actions of others, demonstrating her selfish nature. She does not state her frustration in means of what she needs, but rather what others must do to satisfy her.She paints others black in terms of their deeds: "YOU SHOULD ALWAYS be specific." She wants in shoulds and states what "you"( not herself) ought always be. Sam wants the world to conform to her desires.
ReplyDeleteWhen Sam eventually comes around to the terrible reality of the war, as portrayed in her fathers journal, she reacts in disgust. She is hardly satisfied by that knowledge, but rather dissatisfied by what that realization has not given her: peace and love. Life has disappointed her, she is not disappointed in life.I do not mean this as some sort of treatise on the faults of Sam's character, there are some lovely people in the world who are selfish, it is human nature, Sam is simply more so as she has lacked the affection given by others. Therefore, she has learned to focus on her own wants first.
Have any of you seen the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in D.C.? Here's some photos:
ReplyDeletehttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/2/2a/20090218175200!Vietnam_war_memorial.jpg
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=vietnam+memorial&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=690&tbm=isch&prmd=ivnsm&tbnid=5IHP60r65SmFuM:&imgrefurl=http://www.usmarinetankers.org/in-memoriam/vietnammemorial_lopes/&docid=3TNFvetggSfzyM&w=535&h=339&ei=RmRpTqzHOsjDgQfrr4WCBg&zoom=1
I wonder how this connects to some of your thoughts about Sam's changes over the course of the novel and her selfishness, because as a physical object the wall forces reflection upon it's visitors. Does Mason's choice to end the novel in this place symbolize/signify anything important ab
out Sam?