Week 9- Explicate "Missing"

I decided to focus on the theme of isolation, which I not only found prevalent in Robert Olen’s “Missing” but in the overall theme of the course. A few examples of isolation from previous readings would be, Henry is Lyman Lamartine’s ‘Red Convertible”, Krebs from the story ‘Soldiers Home” and the soldiers from Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried”. Henry returned from war a new man; he was unable to live his life in a regular society. The war had ruined his heart and soul and had left him isolated from a world away from war. Krebs’s return from war found himself isolated from emotions. He did not care anymore about life or his family, which his mother found emotional straining. The groups of young soldiers from “The Things They Carried” were each isolated from the things they loved the most, for some it was isolation from girlfriends and for others it was religion. Isolation has been a constant focus throughout the semester and none has been more common than that of the American soldier in Robert Olen’s story “Missing”. We learn of the soldier’s isolation and alienation from the life he is living in Vietnam. His blond hair and white skin causes him to have great sensitivity and isolation from the tribe he now lives with. He feels isolated from the dark skin and dark hair that the local’s posses, and states that he has given all the bad American traits to his daughter. The soldier discusses his daughter’s American traits, which he feels has caused isolation to her from the tribe. We see an example of this isolation in a description by the soldier, “My daughter is tall now, her body changing from a girl to a woman, and her hair is the brown of the dried tobacco, not black but the color of what we grow and prepare here”. Isolation is a theme that been constant throughout the semester, and yet again in Robert Olen’s “Missing” we were introduced to the similarities of isolation and alimentation.