Absolution

Absolution is structured as a series of letters between Tricia and Rainey. An elderly Tricia narrates much of the novel, retelling her experiences as a 23-year-old in Saigon. This framing device allows the narrative to exist in two times at once, with readers experiencing the first-hand perspectives of a younger Tricia while hearing insights and context from present-day Tricia. Tricia’s interjections often bemusedly highlight how much society has changed since she was a young woman. As she says to Rainey of the past: “[H]ow peculiar it must seem to you” (60).

The novel opens with Tricia attending a prestigious cocktail party for American military families. Alice McDermott introduces the theme of The Experiences of Women in Wartime. In the early 1960s, Kennedy was steadily increasing the flow of US military aid to South Vietnam. Coordinating with President Diem, he oversaw the dispatching of thousands of American advisors like Peter on temporary assignments. Many of these men moved their families with them to Vietnam, and their spouses took on the status of “military wives.” Military wives were viewed as dependents, their identities inextricably linked to their husbands.

The archetypal military wife was “a jewel in [her husband’s] crown” (3), supporting his career by keeping the household in order and making a good impression on his peers and superiors. At the start of the narrative, Tricia’s main objective is to be Peter’s jewel. She forms her identity around his, deferring to him on important questions despite her comparable intelligence, because she “so [trusts him] to be right” (60). Both Peter and Tricia are Catholic and uphold a traditional marriage structure.

Closely linked with this theme is the motif of family (See: Symbols & Motifs). Tricia was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic and working-class household, taught to value family above all things. She is an only child, a dedicated daughter to her widowed father, and desperately wants to have children of her own. Like many young women of her time, Tricia attended college and began a career, but transitioned into a full-time homemaker after her marriage. This is another way in which she conforms to the traditional gender restrictions of her time.

McDermott characterizes Tricia as naïve and passive. Despite her intelligence, she rarely speaks her mind for fear of embarrassment and is easily manipulated by more forceful personalities. Charlene is one such personality. Upon meeting her, Tricia feels like “an easy mark […] genetically disposed to do for her whatever [Charlene] asked” (5). Charlene appears to be the ideal wife, a poised and beautiful socialite with three lovely children, and Tricia envies her picture-perfect life.

As McDermott develops Charlene’s character, however, a more nuanced picture begins to form of a woman who is deeply haunted by “so much wretchedness” (49) in the world. Discontented at the idea of being a passive observer of this wretchedness, Charlene undertakes various philanthropic projects, trying to help the less fortunate in Vietnam. Through her incessant attempts to help, she seeks a sort of cleansing from the dark and painful parts of the human experience, the titular absolution. Charlene’s charity work introduces another key theme, Moral Duty and Compromise. Charlene believes that she has a moral duty to allay pain where she can, and this belief guides her lofty charitable ambitions.

Another theme explored in this section is Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism. Less than a decade after the Geneva Accord officially ended the French colonization of Vietnam, the effects of colonialism remain in plain sight, from the French spoken by the Vietnamese domestic help to the stark income disparity that abounds in Saigon. Charlene and Tricia are thrust into this milieu without a comprehensive understanding of how their status as white Americans affects their interactions with indigenous Vietnamese people. A fundamental power imbalance exists between these American women and the impoverished locals they interact with. In passing moments, Tricia glimpses this dynamic. When Charlene recruits Lily to sew the ao dais, she notes “resignation that looked a little like grief” (24) on Lily’s face and understands that Lily does not have the choice to refuse anything Charlene asks. Tricia displays her ignorance as well: After being told that Lily’s real name is Ly, for example, Tricia promptly goes back to calling her Lily and does so for the rest of the narrative.

Behind these somewhat innocuous slip-ups is a darker reality. Absolution skirts the question of America’s complicity in the devastation of Vietnam. Even as Tricia and Charlene comfort napalm-scarred children in the hospital, their husbands are actively working for the US intervention effort. At the time, Tricia is unable to conceptualize that America might be at fault. Her homegrown perception of the US as a “great, good nation” (32) enables her to ignore her own indirect complicity in the pain she is witnessing. Her Catholic faith also guides her implicit trust in the US government’s actions in Vietnam, as she conceptualizes Catholicism as a force for good that must stand up to the “godless” communism of Ho Chi Minh’s fighters. Present-day Tricia laments the hubris of the visiting Americans, which she describes as “inflated beyond all forgiveness” (37).

Despite Absolution’s wartime setting, the escalating conflict plays out largely in the background. McDermott rarely discusses the war directly, instead alluding to it in small details, such as the napalm burns, the passing mention of a Viet Cong bombing, and the barbed wire around Charlene’s mansion. This backgrounding of the war reflects its protagonists’ limited perspectives. Despite their husbands’ involvement with the military, Charlene and Tricia are protected from the reality of the war by their status as well-to-do Americans. This inability to connect with the brutal reality of the war further complicates the morality of their activism.