In Country (Mason)

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for In Country:

1. Talk about Samantha Hughes. How would you describe her? As a 17-year-old, is her voice strong or engaging enough to carry the weight of this novel? Has Bobbie Ann Mason created a convincing teenager? Do you find her interests banal...if so, why do you think Mason might have chosen such a character to tell the story?

2. Why has Sam's family ignored—or neglected to talk to her about—her father, Dwayne? How and what should they have have told Sam about him? What has been the effect of this erasure of memory on Sam?

3. In what way does the family's neglect of Dwayne parallel America's neglect—even amnesia—of the Vietnam war itself? Why has that particular war, and its veterans, been so difficult to acknowledge?

4. Describe Sam's uncle Emmet and the toll the Vietnamese war has taken on him, as well as his three friends. Why won't they talk about the war?

5. Do you know any men or women who served in Vietnam? If so, are there similarities between them and Emmett, Tom, Earl and Pete?

6. What does Emmett mean when he says, "There's something wrong with me. I'm damaged. It's like something in the center of my heart is gone and I can't get it back"? Can that statement be true of other veterans returning from other wars—or does the Vietnam war hold a special distinction when it comes to damaged souls?

7. What is the symbolic significance of Sam's distance running—especially with regards to her uncle Emmett? How about the faulty transmission in the second-hand car she bought?

8. Mason depicts an American culture that revolves around cable TV and shopping malls. What effect has that consumer culture had on the country?

9. Are Sam's many popular cultural references—to horror movies, brand names, rock stars—meaningful to you? Why would Mason have included so many of them—what role do they play in the story?

10. How would you describe the world and people of western Kentucky, the setting of the novel?

11. Parts of this novel are very funny. Where do you see the humor? In Sam's grandmother?

12. In Country is a classic coming-of-age story. Can you trace the novel's specific coming-of-age phases: separation, isolation, and finally transformation and reintegration? What does Sam learn at the end of the novel—in what way is she transformed or enlightened?

13. The quest for the father has been a literary theme from the earliest ages of storytelling down to the present. Symbolically, what does the quest signify? Why is it such a powerful theme?

14. How does the journey to Washington mirror the journey taking place in Sam's mind? How is that journey more than "just a camping excursion," in the words of one reader? What does the inscription of her own name on the wall signify? What does it mean to Sam?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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