In the following excerpt, Durham explores Mason's young female protagonist's quest to understand why men wage war.
In an interview with Wendy Smith, Bobbie Ann Mason explains that she did not consciously choose to write about Vietnam, that she had characters and action in mind before she realized that they had anything to do with the war. She says, "I think it came out of my unconscious, the same way it's coming out of America's unconscious. It's just time for it to surface."...
Although the novel focuses on seventeen-year-old Sam Hughes' search for the meaning of the Vietnam War, particularly the death of her father, it explores the personal loss of other members of the Hughes family and the changes brought by the war to the community and the nation. In Country is structured around.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 1,686 words. This
study guide contains 25,998 words (approx. 87 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our In Country Access Pass.
