D. Walker's " I am the Grass" initially made me quite depressed to be frank. I thought of all the suffering that those men went through and all the suffering they put others through. I am left with what Walker says in the first paragraph, " I cannot tell my thirteen year old that once, drunk on Ba Muoi beer, I took a girl her age into a thatched-roof hooch in Tay Ninh City and did her on a bamboo mat". ( Meyer,325) I immediately felt such disgust for that man. I did not care what he went through I just felt so emotionally distraught by this admission of horrible guilt that he has. I started to think to myself, " can't we read anything uplifting?".
However, I do think Walker was trying to make a point. I think the setting of Vietnam symbolized the war he feels in himself even at peace times. I think he was trying to make a point that he pays for his sins on a daily basis. He can never forget what he has done even while doing a breast implant for a wealthy woman. As Walker says himself, " I cannot talk about the things that I wish I could forget but know that I never will". ( Meyer, 325) Walker felt a hate for Vietnam even years later. He would go a trip to Vietnam to do his own charity work as a way to come to terms with some of the things he did. Vietnam itself became a symbol of everything wrong in his life and the world. As he visited there he was able to slowly let down his wall and begin to even like the people there. He felt somewhat redeemed in fixing the cleft palates of the children there. He was even given the opportunity to try give Dihn's a thumb transplant. He of course was reluctant but found himself being somewhat hopeful towards success of the transplant. The transplant didn't take and Walker thought that of course it didn't work because that transplant is symbolic of the fact that nothing works in Vietnam. In the end I think that Walker was able to come to terms with what he had done in Vietnam and to even appreciate the place and the people in a way. As he says in the end of the story, " In Vietnam danger has always been ubiquitous, life tenuous, for some reason I welcome the risky ride, it makes me feel part of the land". ( Meyer, 338) I think being a part of Vietnam made him feel alive more so than his life of frivolous plastic surgeries for rich women.
I was wondering what others felt at the end when Dihn's transplant was not successful? What do you think Walker's point was exactly?
I think that through Dihn's unsuccessful transplant Walker was making a point. I think that the new thumb was a means of righting old wrongs for the main character, it was his way of giving back what he had taken from the Vietnamese during the war. Had the transplant been successful, the main character would never have been able to fully move into acceptance of what had happen. I think that if the transplant had been a success he would have felt a need to continue making it up to Vietnam. The failure forced the main character to come to terms with what had happened. I think that through this situation Walker was trying to explain to the reader that we cannot always make up for our actions, sometime we just need to let time pass and move on.
ReplyDeleteI felt that the thumb represented what the war in Vietnam was initially trying to achieve, Democracy. I felt that the surgery on the thumb represented the war as a whole with us trying to implement Democracy in the country. I think that Walker was trying to tell us that Democracy was still not capable of working in the country by making the surgery fail. I also felt that the fact the the narrator leaves the day after the surgery is over is a way of representing how the United States pulled out of Vietnam so abruptly.
ReplyDeleteI think that the main character was finally learning to move on and was at peace realizing that he couldn’t fix the past no matter how he tried. I think that by the thumb being a failure, the character had that final test to prove that he couldn’t fix the past. The character was able to fix many children to which I am sure initially helped him, but in the end he needed to make that step on his own and move, like the grass that covers the fields. I see the grass as a symbol of new life and a new beginning covering-up the past.
ReplyDeleteI believe the unsuccessful transplant symbolizes the fact that no war veteran can get rid of the war memories. For Dinh, getting a new thumb would have given him a sense of closure about all that he endured. Ironically, Dinh getting a new thumb would have served the same purpose for the protagonist. For Dinh, the new thumb would have corrected the violence that had been imposed on him. For the protagonist the new thumb would have corrected the violence that he had imposed on the Vietnamese people. Walker wanted the audience to understand what it is like for a war veteran trying to regain a normal life.
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