Absolution

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Pages 1-90

Part 1, Pages 91-161

Part 1, Pages 162-234

Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Experiences of Women in Wartime

In the opening paragraph of Absolution, Tricia tells Rainey, “[Y]ou have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives” (3). Through the characters of Tricia and Charlene, Absolution opens a window into the daily lives of young military wives during the early days of the Vietnam War. Alice McDermott explores how the war affected marital dynamics and altered the lives of young women in the 1960s.

Traditional, patriarchal dynamics follow military families to Saigon. A military wife is expected to be “the jewel in [her husband’s] crown” (5), supporting him as he advances his career. Husbands are often absent from the narrative, away at various meetings, conferences, and parties. In their absence, the wives keep up a revolving calendar of social events and domestic tasks. Membership in the in-group of military wives entails abiding by an elaborate and frivolous system of social rules: Tricia notes that something as small as a run in a stocking can brand a woman as “drunk, careless, unhappy, indifferent to her husband’s career, even to his affections” (3). The identity of a military wife is tied inherently to her husband. She is essentially an accessory.

At the start of the novel, Tricia defines her identity largely through her marriage to Peter. She feels shy and out of place on her own, a feeling that only goes away when she is talking about Peter. She boasts about his accomplishments as if they were her own. Though she was a teacher before meeting Peter, she quit her job when they were married and seems to have little desire to return to a career of her own. Her primary goal is to support Peter and eventually start a family with him. Though Peter is generally kind and respectful to Tricia, McDermott highlights several instances that reinforce the gendered dynamic of their relationship. Though their marriage is generally a happy one, it is founded on the baseline expectation that Tricia will play her role as a docile housewife. Tricia falls short of this traditional expectation when she has several miscarriages.

Charlene challenges the conventions of 1960s womanhood. Where Tricia enjoys certain aspects of household work, Charlene bristles under the yoke of domesticity. She uses her encyclopedic knowledge of social conventions to her advantage, tacitly manipulating people into doing her bidding. Charlene weaponizes sexism to outfox those who would underestimate her. She finds inventive ways to circumvent the restrictions placed upon her, using her guile and beauty to disarm people. Unlike Tricia, Charlene’s identity seems entirely separate from her husband’s; Kent is only a passing presence in the narrative, his character eclipsed by Charlene’s.

McDermott explores how the war altered the dynamics between men and women. Tricia’s and Charlene’s husbands are away for most of the day, during which time they are expected to engage in domestic duties or socialize among themselves. Practically, these long absences give the women the freedom to roam and explore Saigon. Charlene’s “cabal” reflects the real-life trend of military wives who would engage in social work during the Vietnam War, unwilling to sit around while their husbands worked or fought. Expanding her life beyond the home allows Tricia to solidify her own identity, as the situations she encounters force her to work through questions about morality and her relationship with Peter.

The decision to leave Vietnam is entirely Peter’s. He ends his assignment and books Tricia a flight home without informing her, once again highlighting their imbalanced dynamic. Though Tricia does not leave Vietnam of her own accord, she does leave as a more self-assured and complete version of herself, her character altered by her brief brush with the war.

Moral Duty and Compromise

The question of obligation looms large over Absolution. As a “good Catholic,” Tricia feels obligated to the Greater Good, compelled to contribute positively to the world in some way. Nevertheless, when faced with the pain of others, Tricia feels an impulse to turn away, retreating into the safety of her comfortable life. Absolution explores what people owe to others in need and examines the necessity of compromise when attempting to do good in a world full of suffering.

Like many of her peers, Tricia aligns herself with humanitarian causes. She voices her support for the Civil Rights Movement and teaches at an underserved kindergarten in Harlem, but stops short of involving herself in any form of rebellion that could risk her safety. Tricia chalks this hesitancy up to her reluctance to leave her widowed father on his own, but Absolution suggests deeper and more personal reasons. Early on, Tricia recalls being reluctantly dragged to protest nuclear attack drills by Stella, who hopes to get the two of them thrown in jail, and her relief when they are denied entry. Stella later brings her to Charlottesville to support the Freedom Riders, asserting that “nothing breaks without violence” (129). Tricia is unmoved by Stella’s fiery proclamations and is glad to be excused from this perceived moral duty by Stella’s aunt. Ultimately, Tricia values her safety and comfort over the chance to create sweeping social change. She has “no furious ambition […] to do more than is reasonable about the chaos in the world” (323).

Charlene is a foil to Tricia’s passive approach. The existence of “so much wretchedness” (47) in the world burdens her in a way that it does not burden Tricia. She suffers from horrific night terrors in which the world’s consuming darkness comes to devour her. Charlene feels a core responsibility not to look away from the suffering that surrounds her. To her, the urge to turn away from other people’s hurt is “a very small evil” (150) that serves as a microcosm of the larger evils humanity is capable of. Charlene chooses to face the world’s evils head-on, often putting herself in danger in the process. She voluntarily makes multiple visits to a leprosarium and, later, works with AIDS patients before the facts of the disease’s commutability are known.

As Charlene draws Tricia into her world, Tricia briefly immerses herself in Charlene’s all-out philanthropy, coming along on visits to the children’s hospital and the leprosarium. Tricia grapples with intense feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and resentment when faced directly with the consuming forces of starvation and disease. Often, her philanthropy is driven more by a sense of obligation or a rule-based approach to morality than it is by genuine human connection. Several characters in Absolution raise the question of whether good deeds done without empathy are morally valid, or merely self-serving. Marilee points out that “bestowing gifts on the hopeless” can serve “only to inflate the ego” of the giver (148). An overwhelmed Tricia eventually retreats from Charlene’s cabal. McDermott does not frame Tricia as being in the wrong, presenting her as embodying those who find “righteous indignation […] exhausting to maintain” (43).

Tricia makes one major selfless choice entirely on her own. In Part 3, Charlene arranges an illicit adoption, offering Tricia the chance to bring Suzie back to America. This morally dubious arrangement seems like the solution to Tricia’s fertility issues, which have caused her great shame and pain. When Suzie’s siblings show up at her house demanding their sister back, Tricia is faced with a choice to prioritize her own happiness or theirs. Despite being given a moral out by Charlene and Minh-Linh, who pressure her to keep the baby, Tricia ultimately places Suzie back in the arms of her siblings. However, Tricia does not go on to become an avowed altruist. After leaving Vietnam, she settles into an ordinary life with Peter, focusing on her family and contenting herself with small acts of goodness. This is the compromise that Tricia can live with.

McDermott offers no easy answers to the question of moral duty. Neither Tricia nor Charlene is presented as the morally superior character. McDermott simply contrasts their approaches to the messy reality of altruism as they seek balance in a world full of suffering. The narrative concludes with Tricia still poring over the moral implications of her experiences in Vietnam, inviting the reader to do the same.

Colonial Legacies and White Saviorism

The term “white savior” is a critical descriptor for a white person in a position of power who attempts to uplift people of color, often in developing countries, while simultaneously denying their agency. Several of the characters in Absolution display behavior that falls under the umbrella of white saviorism. McDermott explores how Vietnam’s history of colonization complicates Tricia’s and Charlene’s attempts to do good and examines the fine, sometimes blurry line between philanthropy and white saviorism.

By the time Tricia and Peter arrive in Saigon in 1963, Vietnam is less than a decade out from French colonial rule (See: Background). The legacy of French colonialism lingers, creating a power structure into which they inadvertently slot themselves. In Saigon, the stationed Americans are encased in a cocoon, “polished to high shine by [their] sense of [themselves] and [their] great, good nation” (32). Their perspective on Vietnam is biased by their upbringings, influenced by religion and American anti-communist rhetoric. American characters misunderstand the country around them. Peter, for example, supports the Diem regime because Diem promotes Catholicism, ignoring Diem’s persecution of Vietnam’s Buddhist majority. When a Buddhist monk self-immolates in protest, Peter is shocked, as this act conflicts with his perception of Buddhists as “a gentle, deeply spiritual people” (135). Peter’s attitude stems from ignorance of Vietnam’s history and culture, leading him to support a politician who is doing active harm to the country’s natives.

When Tricia steps into Charlene’s world, the question of white saviorism haunts their charity work. Charlene volunteers with the less fortunate in Vietnam. Her activism is driven by her genuine desire to right some of the world’s many wrongs. She is devoted to her work to the extent of self-sacrifice, as evinced by Dom’s memory of her holding a dying child in her arms. The most tangible results of her efforts are moments of comfort and levity for suffering people. As Dom notes at the leprosarium, “[T]here should be some kind of medal” (188) for making the patients laugh.

However, to varying degrees, Tricia and Charlene display white saviorism in their beneficence. Though Charlene’s motivations are genuine, she operates from a place of power as a wealthy, white American. At times, this power shields her from the repercussions of her actions. Charlene is condescending toward the Vietnamese, christening every Vietnamese woman she meets with an Anglicized nickname and correcting Minh-Linh about the name of a Buddhist deity. These small acts bespeak a larger irony in her character, suggesting that she does not regard her charity recipients as her equals. Even as Charlene comforts children burned by American-supplied napalm, her husband Kent is working to support the US’s military intervention in Vietnam. Maintaining her role as Kent’s “helpmeet” requires Charlene to take a myopic view of the situation in Vietnam that ignores her own family’s complicity in the suffering that so disturbs her.

The most glaring example of white saviorism in Absolution occurs when Charlene arranges to have Tricia adopt a Vietnamese infant nicknamed “Suzie” from a makeshift orphanage. In Charlene’s eyes, this is a win-win situation, as it fulfills Tricia’s desire to have a child and ostensibly places Suzie in a more stable situation. Charlene and Tricia both fail to consider the effect of removing Suzie from the environment she has been raised in and separating her from her de-facto siblings. Their attempt to “save” Suzie causes great distress to both Tricia and Suzie’s siblings, and Tricia returns Suzie to them.

McDermott subtly draws a parallel between these smaller acts of white saviorism to the larger history of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, largely regarded in hindsight as a misguided act of hubris by the American government. Though the early years of the war serve as set dressing for the narrative, Absolution avoids delving deeply into the politics of the Vietnam War, ultimately remaining a story about small-scale human interests. McDermott presents a nuanced picture of Tricia and Charlene, women who are out to do good in a situation influenced by decades of historical baggage, asking the uneasy question of whether their actions were ultimately more helpful or harmful.