Absolution

In the final section of the novel, McDermott returns to Tricia’s narrative to retroactively deliver a plot twist that ties together all of Absolution’s themes: The revelation that Charlene arranged an under-the-table adoption for Tricia. For Tricia, high stakes ride on the decision. Keeping Suzie would allow her to become a mother after all, offering a form of absolution from her perceived failures and welcoming her back into the realm of idealized womanhood. The afternoon Tricia spends with Suzie passes in a haze of delirious happiness as she finally gets to play the role of mother. However, she is aware of an essential wrongness to the situation: Suzie has been fattened up and styled like a doll to appeal to her, hinting at Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism.

Charlene’s organization of the illicit adoption is her clearest display of white saviorism, a result of her sincere desire to help combined with all the ways she fails to understand the situation in Vietnam. She earnestly believes that taking Suzie away from her family and placing her with Tricia will guarantee a better life for the baby, because Tricia is a well-off American woman. Her assumption ignores a myriad of other factors, like the effect of taking a baby away from her family and placing her in an unfamiliar culture. Charlene does not seem to view Suzie as a human being with rights: At best she is a docile recipient of Charlene’s benevolence, at worst a commodity, calling back to Charlene comparing Vietnamese infants to luxury accessories in Part 2. Charlene’s attitude contains subconscious echoes of colonialism in the assumption that she knows what is best for Suzie. Despite Charlene’s folly, Absolution doesn’t explicitly condemn her: She is ultimately portrayed as an exceptional, but still fallible, woman who valiantly tried to fight the “gobbling whirlwind” of the world all her life.

Tricia displays character development in her decision to give Suzie back to her siblings. When faced directly with Suzie’s siblings, the narrative calls back to Tricia’s visit to Charlottesville. Once again, she is offered the choice to turn away from their suffering, a chance at absolution from her personal troubles. Minh-Linh even urges her to send the children away because Suzie will have a better life with her. This time, Tricia chooses not to ignore the children. She makes a sacrifice to allay their pain, extending herself for others in a way that she has not previously done.

Further development is evinced by Tricia’s emotional responses to Charlene and Peter. Tricia has spent almost the entirety of the narrative in subservient positions, allowing stronger personalities to speak over her, playing the quiet sidekick to Charlene and dutiful wife to Peter. Charlene’s manipulations have gone so far as to intervene in Tricia’s future, ostensibly because Charlene believes she knows what is best for her friend. Tricia finally allows herself to feel anger at having her agency taken away, by “those who’d set out to do good on [her] behalf” (318). She is no longer the meek and easily manipulated girl she was at the start of the narrative. Her experiences during the war have matured her into a woman who can stand up for herself and make difficult, self-sacrificing decisions.

As the novel closes, McDermott returns to the theme of Moral Duty and Compromise. Neither woman gets to live out their values exactly the way she imagined. Tricia does not get to be a mother, and even Charlene must return to America, turning her back on the suffering people of Saigon for the sake of keeping her family safe. Both women move on from Vietnam, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions. Readers are left to ponder whether their actions ultimately caused more good or harm to those they tried to help. In the narrative, as in real life, no easy absolution is offered.