54 pages • 1 hour read
Bobbie Ann MasonIn Country
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains incidents of alcohol and substance misuse and references to post-traumatic stress disorder and death by suicide.
The chapter opens in 1984, with Sam Hughes, her uncle Emmett Smith, and her paternal grandmother Mamaw Hughes driving from the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky to Washington, DC to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This chapter is very short and written in the present tense from Sam’s perspective.
Sam, a recent high school graduate, is 17. Her father Dwayne died in the Vietnam War a month before she was born. Emmett is also a Vietnam War veteran. Mamaw, Dwayne's mother, has not traveled out of the state of Kentucky before. The trio travels in Sam's new car, an old Volkswagen with transmission trouble.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
The car threatens to break down, but they push on, listening to popular music on the radio. They eventually pull into a Howard Johnson's motel, where the three will share one room because they have very little money. Mamaw is scandalized that she will spend the night in a room with a man. Sam thinks the room is beautiful and clean, with “a secret history of thousands of people, their vibrations and essence soaked into the walls and rug” (12).
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
As the group has their dinner at the Howard Johnson's, Mamaw reflects on how life would have been different had Dwayne lived. She believes that Dwayne, Sam, and Irene—Sam’s mother, who remarried after Dwayne’s death—would have lived near her on their farm, and Sam would have had siblings. Sam is horrified to think about living on a farm. Mamaw tells the story she heard on television of a Gold Star Mother, who is the mother of a US Armed Forces member entitled to display a service flag with a gold star after her child dies in action. The woman did not find out what had happened to her son in Vietnam for 10 years after his death and only learned of it when his buddy finally contacted her. She thinks it is a touching story.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
The next day in Maryland, the transmission in Sam's car finally gives out. Emmett tells Sam that Tom has sold her a bad car, but Sam defends him. Emmett has a pain in his head but is very patient with Mamaw. Sam, on the other hand, is increasingly irritated by her grandmother.
The group ends up staying at a Holiday Inn where Emmett and Mamaw watch television and Sam sits by the pool, aware of traffic rushing by in all directions. She feels herself to be “in limbo.”
That night, they all watch a special on the election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. Emmett adds whiskey to the cola he and Sam are drinking, and Sam gets a little drunk. They finish the night watching the Johnny Carson show. All three characters are sad: Emmett misses his cat, Mamaw misses home, and Sam misses Tom Hudson. Despite this, she wishes “the car repair would take forever” because she is afraid of going to Washington (20).
Part 1 Analysis
Although Part 1 of In Country is only about 20 pages, it serves to introduce and develop the main characters Sam and Emmett, situate the book in a particular time and place, reveal the novel's structure and literary style, and hint at themes that will be developed throughout the rest of the book.
In this section, Mason portrays Sam as an intelligent young woman who longs for more than Hopewell can offer. She is attempting to assert her independence and adulthood while at the same time revealing her misgivings about their trip. Because Mason chooses to use a third-person limited point of view, the events of the novel are filtered through Sam's consciousness. The opening of the novel firmly situates the story as Sam's—her life, her hopes and dreams, and her search for identity as she grows into adulthood. Indeed, Coming-of-Age and the Search for Identity becomes an important thematic concern throughout the novel.
Emmett, a Vietnam War veteran, reveals his head pain and his tendency to appear lost in his thoughts. Emmett has PTSD, and his constant smoking and alcohol misuse suggest that he is self-medicating to dull the physical and emotional pain caused by his memories of war. However, his patience with Mamaw also demonstrates that he is a kind and good man, despite his suffering. Told from Sam's perspective, Emmett's story is The Journey from Traumatized Isolation to Integrative Healing.
The story unfolds in 1984, nearly 10 years after the close of the Vietnam War and at the start of what will become the Ronald Reagan presidency. Although Part 1 takes place on the road to Washington instead of Hopewell, Kentucky, the setting for the main part of the book, Mamaw's lack of worldliness and Sam's longing to get away from Kentucky suggest that the characters live in an impoverished and isolated part of the country. Nonetheless, Mason demonstrates that towns like Hopewell are undergoing seismic shifts in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, brought on by television, credit cards, malls, and big-box stores.
Stylistically, critics commenting on In Country identify Mason's work as an example of “shopping mall realism,” also known as “Kmart Realism” or “low-rent tragedies,” terms also applied to stories by Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, and Tobias Wolf. It is a minimalist style of American literature that was prominent in the 1980s and featured working-class stories framed by tense or bleak settings. Characteristically, Mason uses spare language, working-class characters, details of everyday life, and iconic moments of popular culture throughout the novel. The speech patterns of her characters reveal their rural, Appalachian roots. Likewise, her use of specific and realistic details firmly settles the novel in its time and place. For example, Howard Johnson's was a common fixture of the 1960s and 1970s with over 1,000 restaurants known for their fried clams and 28 flavors of ice cream. The orange and turquoise Howard Johnson’s were ubiquitous then, but by the 1980s, the restaurants entered a period of steep decline before its final closure in 2022. Mason's characters, from a town they describe as being 15 years behind the times, are unaware that this icon of American travel life is in its last years. Through Kmart Realism, Mason uses seemingly minute cultural details to not only flavor her story but to also trace The Changing Landscape of American Life.
Structurally, Part 1 and Part 3, both written in the present tense, serve as bookends for the novel. The journey begins in Part 1 and concludes in Part 3 when they reach the memorial, with Part 2 told in a past-tense flashback. By using a frame narrative such as this, Mason provides both an introduction to many of the thematic concerns of the book as well as closure at the end. The journey to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is both literal and metaphoric, one that is visualized by their drive to Washington, DC but mirrors Sam's growth and Emmett's healing.
