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 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary
The third part of In Country is less than 20 pages. As the chapter opens, Sam reflects on the events after her sojourn to Cawood’s Pond. Although she expected Emmett to “flip out,” she is surprised that she is the one most affected by spending the night in the swamp. She believes that now she is experiencing “post-Vietnam stress syndrome” (229).
Emmett announces the plan to go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. He seems to have new energy and makes the decisions concerning their trip. Sam is too stunned to help.
At her mother’s house in Lexington, Sam tells her mother about Dwayne's letters and diary. Irene says she never read the diary because she did not want to remember that time. She tells Sam about the hippie she was in love with after Dwayne’s death. Sam gives her mother the cat she bought, and Irene is deeply touched.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary
The scene shifts back to the journey. While the group waits for the transmission on Sam’s car to be repaired, Sam goes to a shopping mall near the Holiday Inn where they are staying. Sam uses her mother’s Visa card to buy Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album.
A little later, they drive into Washington, DC. The thought of her own death strikes Sam abruptly as she thinks about the names on the wall. Once they arrive, they do not immediately see the memorial; it is dug into the ground, and as such, appears suddenly as they approach it.
Emmett finds the directory of names appearing on the wall and their locations. He finds Dwayne’s name and directs Mamaw and Sam to the right panel. Sam asks Emmett if there are names he wants to look up, and he says he wants to know if one guy that he remembers made it out of the firefight that killed all his friends. Many people are slowly moving through the memorial, looking at the names.
Sam and Mamaw find Dwayne’s name. Mamaw must climb a ladder to touch his name. Next is Sam’s turn to climb the ladder. Mamaw tries to take a picture but says that all she can see is her own reflection. Afterward, Sam looks up her father’s name in the directory herself and suddenly sees the name “Sam A. Hughes” in the directory. She runs to the panel where she finds this name and touches it with her fingers.
In the penultimate paragraph of the book, Mamaw asks, “Did we lose Emmet?” (245), but they have not. Emmett is looking at names near the bottom of a panel: “He is sitting there cross-legged in front of the wall, and slowly his face bursts into a smile like flames” (245). The book closes with this line, which implies that Emmett has not found his friend’s name there.
Part 3 Analysis
In the novel's final section, Mason structurally closes the circle begun in the opening pages with a return to the journey by Sam, Emmett, and Mamaw to the memorial. First, however, in Chapter 1, Sam reflects on the days immediately after her confrontation with Emmett at Cawood's Pond and then on the night they spend at Irene's in Lexington on their way. Mason uses this format to emphasize Sam and Emmett's character development as well as provide closure for Sam and Irene.
In the wake of her crisis, Sam “knew she was behaving the way Emmett had acted a lot of the time, just strung out and dazed […] They had changed places, she thought. She had post-Vietnam stress syndrome” (229). Because Sam is still in many ways a child, it is appropriate for her to take some time being a child instead of maintaining the caretaking position she's had over Emmett. Her development depends on her being nurtured. For his part, Emmett demonstrates his need to take care of his niece in a way he has never done before. His development depends on being a nurturer. In both instances, these characters are processing new ways of being and interacting with each other.
Consequently, Sam reveals a new maturity while in Lexington. She seems less jealous of Irene’s baby Heather, more tolerant of her mother's new husband, and more able to listen to her mother's story. Mason develops Irene's character in these pages as well. By so doing, Irene's motivation for wanting Sam to go to college becomes clearer. Irene feels that she got stuck herself, giving up on a man she loved after her husband died to take care of Emmett in Hopewell. Irene's regret is palpable. When Sam gives Irene the cat she bought for her earlier, Irene is overjoyed, saying, “Oh, Sam, this is the sweetest thing anybody ever gave me” (236). The gift signals both Sam's care for her mother as well as Irene's appreciation for her older daughter.
Thematically, Sam continues her coming-of-age journey with a new awareness of her mortality. As she enters Washington, DC, “where the Vietnam Memorial bears the names of so many who died, the reality of death hits her in broad daylight” (238). She considers not only her own death but the inevitable and eventual deaths of Mamaw Hughes and Emmett, as well as how her death would affect Emmett should he still be alive. This kind of reflection shows a maturing individual. When she went to Cawood's Pond, she went on impulse and out of anger, without ever considering the danger it put her in or the effect it would have on Emmett. Now, however, with the names of all the men who died on the wall, she contemplates both life and rebirth: “Sam doesn't understand what she is feeling, but it is something so strong, it is like a tornado moving in her, something massive and overpowering. It is like giving birth to this wall” (240). In reality, Sam is not giving birth to the wall, but giving birth to herself as a new creature. When she touches the name “Sam Hughes” on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, it is as a newly formed adult, someone who feels empathy and love for other people, one who recognizes that just as everyone is born, everyone dies. She becomes one not only with the dead soldier but with all people.
Mason uses the motif of death in the visual imagery of the final chapters, particularly in her descriptions of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial: “It is like a giant grave, fifty-eight thousand bodies rotting here behind those names” (239). Although no one is buried at the Memorial, each of the names listed there was once attached to a living body, and the solemnity of that fact hangs like a shroud over the wall. The wall itself, constructed of highly polished black granite, is of the same composition as many cemetery monuments and stands as a giant headstone marking the deaths of over 58,000 people. Mason also uses bird imagery in the final pages, writing, “The memorial cuts like a V in the ground, like the wings of an abstract bird, huge and headless” (239). Blackbirds such as ravens, crows, and vultures are often associated with death. In the last line, however, Emmett's cross-legged posture and his face in flames recall the image of the phoenix, a bird who dies before resurrecting itself. Assuming a posture that recalls the monks in Vietnam who self-immolated to bring about a new reality for Vietnam, Emmett begins the construction of a new reality for himself. He completes, or at least makes significant progress in, The Journey from Traumatized Isolation to Integrative Healing.
With the final scene at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Mason bookends a novel about remembering and forgetting, loss and sorrow, and fragmentation and wholeness. The last lines speak to the possibility of healing, not only for Emmett and Sam but for the nation.
