ENG-102
Judy Parks
January 30 2014
Theme In ”I am the Grass”
Daly Walker´s ”I am the Grass” is a short story about Vietnam War veteran, currently practicing plastic surgery, who goes back to Vietnam to ”repair the cleft palates and lips of children on whose land I once wreaked havoc, whose parents and grandparents I murdered and whom, somewhere deep inside me, I still hold in contempt.” Behind the obvious storyline, the story , however, serves us more complicated and moving, even sad example about vulnerable man, who can not escape the ghosts of his past, no matter how hard he is trying.
The story consists several different themes that are all related to each others. These themes include war, regret, forgiveness, re-orientation and atonement. To me, forgiveness and atonement seemed to become the main themes of this story. The narrator is struggling with his past and he can not get over it. ” I can not talk about these things that I wish I could forget but know that I never will, ” narrator still bemoans, nevertheless he has been home already for 20 years. He can not tell the truth about the war to his wife nor his daughter and he is desperately ashamed about the things he did while in Vietnam. To make himself feel better, to forgive himself, to remind himself that there is still humanity left inside of him, he works abroad every summer for couple of weeks helping children. By doing this, he is trying to atone the horrors he did in the past.
As story shows us later on, forgetting is impossible and narrator does not become able to forgive himself. The day he is leaving back home from Vietnam where he was working during the summer described in the text, he is still thinking all the horrors he experienced and participated during the war, ”I see him drinking soup made with his own flesh and bone.” Unfortunately for the narrator, some experiences are unforgettable and more over, unforgivable.