Blog 11 JCP

The novel In Country is obviously a war story, but also the story of growing up. The main character is Samantha Hughes, a girl who lost her father in Vietnam. From the war story aspect the film shows how the war not only affected those who were there physically fighting, but also their loved ones. Sam develops a great curiosity in the war because she is curious about who her father was. She sees Emmet, her uncle, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder attempting to live a normal life. Sam can look to him for an idea of who her father was, but he is different from the war, and more importantly no one can truly represent a parent. Sam even watches MASH trying to understand the war. When at Vietnam War Memorial when the narrator says "And she will never really know what happened to all these men in the war" (240). Sam is lost trying to find herself as represented by her search to understand the war and her father.

This novel is set in 1984, on a road trip from Kentucky to DC. The fact that it is told from an after war perspective from someone who was not in Vietnam gives it an unique angle on the war and how it affected people long after it was over. Also the road trip is representative of how the war affected the whole country. Also being at the Vietnam War Memorial is a powerful image of the huge losses of life that result from war.

Popular culture played a large role in this novel because Sam is part of a generation largely guided by pop culture. Her father and uncle were of the generation that went to war or were affected by the war. Although Sam is affected by the war because of the loss of her father, she doesn't understand it as if she lived through it. The emergence of MTV was her generations escape from the generation above them who were largely still war focused. Also the usage of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" was representative of the feeling in America. The most memorable and known part of the song are the patriotic lyrics repeating "Born in the USA." However the lyrics upon closer examination are about the war saying "so they put a rife in my hand, sent me off to Vietnam, to go and kill the yellow man." This shows how much of Sam's generation were starting to move on from the war focusing on the chorus, but her uncles generation is still stuck in the war represented by the other lyrics.