Blog 11 ARB

The novel In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason, is not only a war novel, but a novel of investigation, or a story about a teenage girl trying to learn and understand what happened to her father, her uncle, and all the Veterans in the Vietnam War. Throughout the book, Sam is on a mission to determine what happened to her father and what he was like. Also to find out why Emmett had such hardships from the war. Sam realizes why Emmett can't hold a job and its because he needs to find things to distract him from his memories of the war and that takes up all his energy therefore he can't work steadily. It can be argued if he finds a steady job he wouldn't hold because he would just have to with all the post traumatic stress that he has from the war. But the most influential part of the book where Sam really understands what Vietnam was all about was when she went to the pond on the country side or she goes In country to understand the terrain and all the noises and smells and she spends the night fantasizing what it was like for these soldiers. She becomes very frightened of what she imagines and also when she hears Emmett coming to find her that she can understand why soldiers who actually say what she imagined can be the effect for the rest of their lives after the war.

The idea that this novel is set after the war contributes to the overall effect that the novel is supposed to have on the readers. By not giving lots of in war stories and details, the setting of the novel really helps us focus on post war effects of Emmett and how when people like Emmett return to the lives of those they behind for war like Sam, how it directly effects Sam even though she wasn't in the war all. Sam is obviously directly effected by the war because of her father, but even if her father wasn't in it and her uncle was, it shows how curious she was towards his behavior let alone trying to figure out what happened to her father. It gives a new approach about the war how most people overlooked the idea of other family members being effected by the war once those soldiers returned. We understand that soldiers have PTSD and they have troubles once they get home, but this novel focuses on how family of those soldiers are effected once a member of the family comes home as in Emmett or if they if they don't, as in Sam's father and the post war setting the only way to do this.

Pop culture during this time had either pro war content or anti war content. Lots of music and lyrics expressed different feelings such as the quote in the beginning of the book before the novel starts by Bruce Springsteen in his song Born In the U.S.A. This song is wrongly misinterpreted as a patriotic American song, when really it is all about the effect of the Vietnam war and how they negatively effected Americans after the. The quote read, "I'm ten years burning down the road, Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go". This quote can be related to Emmett and the idea that he doesn't have anywhere to go but to find things to distract his memories and stress until the day he can come to terms to with, or until the day he dies. Another piece of pop culture in the novel is M*A*S*H which is a show about the Korean war, but aired during the Vietnam war. It goes to show how everything that revolved around life during involvement in Vietnam was war related. And the M*A*S*H also connected Sam with ideas and feeling about the Vietnam war that she wanted to understand. The entire time period of the Vietnam war is known for it's influential pop culture mainly arguing anti-war messages. During those times some of the best music, film and literature was created because of how influential the Vietnam was to our country the people that it effected. Everyone was directly influenced by the war even if you didn't fight in the war because you were always hoping a loved lived, fighting for your beliefs, and determined to understand why this war had such unbelievable effects upon a single persona and a country as a whole.