Absolution

“I’d noticed this before, among girls of her tribe: they knew an easy mark, a girl of lesser means who would be reflexively—genetically—disposed to do for her whatever she asked.”

Here, Tricia identifies herself as an “easy mark” for more domineering personalities due to her passiveness and working-class background. This quality will come to define her relationship with Charlene, to whom Tricia plays sidekick for much of the novel.

“But Saigon was still a lovely, an exotic, adventure (we’d also seen The King and I—in fact, I saw it four times)—and the cocoon in which American dependents dwelled was still polished to a high shine by our sense of ourselves and our great, good nation.”

In hindsight, Tricia acknowledges her own limited understanding and westernized perspective, raising the issue of Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism. Tricia and the other American dependents live in a gilded bubble, sheltered from the havoc of the war, and they are largely unaware of their complicity in the suffering and exploitation of the Vietnamese.

“It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me not as his wife but as his charge.”

Despite Peter and Tricia having a loving and stable marriage, their relationship is constrained by gendered dynamics. They share an implicit understanding that Peter has authority over Tricia, though he rarely exercises it. Tricia’s sense of herself as subservient to Peter forms an important element of The Experiences of Women in Wartime.

“Righteous indignation was exhausting to maintain, even as a silent partner.”

Tricia finds it difficult to muster and maintain care about things that don’t directly affect her. This difficulty empathizing makes her a reluctant activist, speaking to the theme of Moral Duty and Compromise. While Tricia senses she has a moral duty to help others, her personality and temperament make her more self-focused compared to the more energetic activism of other characters, like Charlene.

“If only because I believed that when I held out my hand and made small talk and accepted their invitations (Roberta was having a luncheon at her home the following week, with a speaker, an American-Vietnamese cultural exchange; it would be wonderful if I could attend), I was somehow advancing my husband’s illustrious career.”

Here, Tricia speaks to the expectations that bind her and the other military wives. The women are told that it is their duty to support their husbands by networking and social-climbing, when in reality their actions have little to do with the trajectory of their husbands’ careers, reinforcing their subservient status within the gender dynamics of the American community.

“‘There’s so much wretchedness,’ she added. I assumed at the time she meant in Vietnam, but looking back on it, I’m certain she meant in the world at large.”

This quote establishes Charlene’s attitude toward Moral Duty and Compromise. She is disturbed by the degree of suffering in the world and wants to mitigate it by any means necessary. Unlike Tricia, she feels energized by her charity work and busily seeks to constantly do more.

“Peter and I had brought that happy New Yorkers’ faith in back-seat immunity, invincibility—or is it fatalism?—to Saigon with us. We had been well steeped in it during that first cyclo tour. But now, with Charlene, I was up front, at the dashboard, right beside an utter madwoman.”

This moment symbolizes the beginning of Tricia’s shift from someone who is led by others to a more independent person who takes charge of her own life. Notably, though Tricia is at the dashboard, it is Charlene who is driving the car, indicating that Tricia is still under her manipulations. However, Tricia is gradually becoming more aware—and discomfited—by this dynamic.

“Napalm. White phosphorus. But I can’t say for sure that’s what it was. Who was to blame for that anguish.”

Recalling her visits to the children’s hospital, Tricia remembers what she now suspects to be napalm burns. Knowing that the American government was supplying napalm by that point, Tricia still hesitates to blame America outright for the children’s suffering. This can be seen as another instance of her looking away, unable or unwilling to confront a painful reality, reflecting the theme of Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism.

“Now the easy, fertile future—my part in our successful life together—was no longer so easy. Or so assuredly mine.”

At the start of the novel, Tricia feels that her life path is clear: She will have Peter’s children and become a homemaker. This is her “part” in a successful life and her duty as a woman. When she miscarries, however, she must contend with her potential inability to achieve the milestone of traditional femininity that she has been striving toward.

“All sense of family obligation erased so we could go to work—work being, in this godless world, our only source of happiness, our only reason for being, our sweetness and our hope.”

Though Tricia and Stella are joking in this quote about the fallout of communism, they are touching on a belief system instilled by the patriarchal society of the 1960s: that women can either raise their families or work, but not both.

“‘The original sin is ours, our family’s. We don’t have the option to stay safe. Not anymore. A sin like that can’t be absolved’—and here she turned up her lip, waved a hand in the air as if to flick from her fingertips something sticky and distasteful—‘safely.’”

Here, Stella states her belief that she is marked by sin because she is descended from enslaver ancestors. She posits that safe and restrained forms of protest are not enough. To achieve absolution, Stella believes that she must accept discomfort or even violence in her approach to Moral Duty and Compromise, a philosophy later echoed by Charlene.

“I was beginning to suspect that Marilee was the kind of woman, numerous in those days, who strove to parrot her husband—not as an act of fealty, not even of admiration or love, but as an attempt, I think, to appear masculine herself.”

Absolution briefly touches on how women within a patriarchy internalize misogyny, weaponizing gendered conventions against one another. In this passage, Tricia suggests that Marilee tries to appear strong and “masculine,” but ironically, can only do so by mirroring her husband’s beliefs instead of formulating her own.

“‘Turning away,’ a gentle indulgence now in her voice, ‘it’s an honest reaction, isn’t it?’ As ever, she did not pause for a reply. ‘But it’s an indication nevertheless of what we’re capable of, it seems to me. We’re capable of turning away. We’re capable of despising the sight of something so awful, something so incongruous to the good order we prefer.’”

Speaking with Marilee, Charlene outlines her moral philosophy. Though she understands that the impulse to look away is natural, she subtly shames Marilee for giving in to it, suggesting that it is immoral to turn away from things one finds uncomfortable or distasteful.

“A young woman on an adventure that was safe (I’d been reassured) and yet daring (my husband had no idea where I was.) A young woman who had never been shy. A kind of saint.”

Tricia’s excursions with Charlene make her feel brave and worldly. Their trips offer a welcome reprieve from the routine that military wives are expected to adhere to, reflecting The Experiences of Women in Wartime.

“The revulsion I had kept in check all day, tucked under my ribs, stifled, ignored, smothered with a rigorous effort at compassion, at goonish, grinning sympathy, broke apart. I felt it flooding my chest, rising into my throat. I had risked my life, my happy future, for these gross and hopeless creatures.”

Altruism does not come naturally to Tricia. Here, she describes the hard work it takes for her to overcome her feelings of revulsion and base instinct to turn away from sights she finds disturbing. This calls back to Charlene’s earlier quote about the capability to hate awful things, as Tricia experiences a visceral hatred toward the leprosy-afflicted patients.

“A blessing, too, I suppose. The shrug that casts off guilt.”

The idea of this “shrug,” the privilege to cast off feelings of guilt and obligation over other peoples’ pain, recurs throughout Absolution. Tricia is conflicted about her own tendency to shrug off problems that do not affect her life. Here, she frames it as a blessing, as it offers her reprieve from the emotional weight of holding onto someone else’s pain.

“I suspect she was busy with her five kids, with the demands of her husband’s career in what she had begun to call in her Christmas letters ‘global health.’ To be a helpmeet to such a man is, I suppose, yet another way to repair the world.”

At the peak of Tricia and Stella’s friendship, Stella is a dynamo with an uncompromising desire to fix the world at all costs. As an adult, she settles into a more conventional life path. Rather than framing this negatively, Tricia views it positively, in keeping with Absolution’s conceit that life requires compromise, and firebrand activism is not the only way to do good.

“Children, she claimed, were a married woman’s golden handcuffs. ‘As we say in the corporate world.’ With a Career Girl sniff. ‘If your mother had left, she would have lost you.”

Here, Charlene’s sister implies that women have a binary choice between convention and freedom. Some aspects of Absolution support this idea (Tricia and Charlene are indeed limited by their obligations to family), while others subvert it (both women manage to lead fulfilling lives despite these obligations).

“I’ll never forget it. She was pissed as hell. She said, as if we could do anything about it, ‘this is unacceptable.’”

Though Absolution thoroughly explores Charlene’s faults, Alice McDermott highlights her unfailing care for the world at large. She is genuinely disturbed by the suffering of others, and truly wants to help in any way she can, even when this means putting herself in danger or distress.

“I certainly don’t think it was the Devil you encountered at the leprosarium, no American Satan that my mother bargained with in Saigon. I think he was just a man—a man like my father, like your husband. A man out to repair the world.”

The American doctor remains an enigmatic presence throughout the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs). His true nature is never revealed, but each character’s view of him reveals something about their perspective. Rainey, who has cast off her parents’ religious views and has seen the many mistakes made by Americans in Vietnam, believes he was just a misguided, would-be do-gooder like many of the men of her father’s generation.

“And as I write this, I feel my mother’s thin hand clutching my chin, directing my gaze even as she forbids easy tears: an uncrossable river, an endless task, demons, yes, but also one benevolent being. Just one.”

The amount of darkness in the world is often overwhelming and demoralizing to the characters of Absolution. Here, Rainey frames her mother as a beacon of hope within the darkness, highlighting how one person’s courage and kindness can ward off hopelessness.

“In truth, there had been no whispering in the dark, no shared consideration. We’d never discussed it at all. No fault of Peter’s, really. What it was like for us, in those days. Us wives.”

Tricia ruefully reflects on how normalized misogyny was during her young womanhood and throughout The Experiences of Women in Wartime. She retroactively absolves Peter of fault for not asking her if she wants to leave Vietnam early, understanding that his attitude was a reflection of the patriarchy he was raised in.

“When I try to recount what was going through my mind in all this, I can think only of hot and cold—hot with anger, at Charlene, at Peter, at everyone in my life who had considered my opinions inconsequential, who had lied to me or ignored me or manipulated me for what they considered my own benefit. Hot to think of those who’d set out to do good on my behalf.”

This moment represents a turning point for Tricia’s character. After a lifetime of letting herself be dragged around by other people, she rejects Charlene’s and Peter’s attempts to dictate the course of her life, indicating her self-actualization. This quote also highlights the complications that can arise from unasked-for acts of charity, as Tricia realizes that the illegal adoption of Suzie is tied to Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism.