In Country Themes

In Country Themes

War and Peace

Because the novel is set eleven years after America's withdrawal from Vietnam, and it focuses on a protagonist who does not have direct experience of the conflict but knows it through her uncle and the father she never knew, it is able to examine the emotional and psychological effects of war from a unique perspective. While a war is being fought, and for the years following it, attention is given mainly to the theoretical debates about why it was fought. This holds especially true of the Vietnam War, where disagreements about America's responsibilities and America's guilt overshadowed any interest in the veterans who did the actual fighting, making them pawns in a struggle between two determined ideologies.

In Country ignores the reasons for and against the war and has Emmett supporting both sides, first by joining the Army and then by joining the antiwar hippies. He is not a...
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