Week 12 closed topic

This story was about a girl on the quest to find out who she truly is. Her whole life she has known that her dad died in Vietnam, and thus had never met him. She also knows that her uncle, Emmett, went to Vietnam and he survived. She is very protective over her uncle, always telling him to go get tested for Agent Orange because of his health problems. She talks to a picture of her father, trying to make him more personable, and less of a picture. At one point, she goes to visit her grandma and grandpa to talk about her father. There, she finds a diary he kept during the war. When she reads this, she becomes disgusted with her father, and at one point says she hates him. She decides to visit the War Memorial, where she finally figures out who she is. It is important to understand who Sam is in order to see why this is important.


At the end, Sam is going through the directory of those who lost their lives. She finds a version of her name, Sam Alan Hughes, and is touched by it. "Her heart pounding, she rushes to panel 14E, and after racing her eyes over the string of names for a moment, she locates her own name....She touches her own name. How odd it feels..." (244-245). Throughout the story, Sam has taken for granted that she is alive. I think at this point in the story, she values her life more and the fact that had her dad not died, she wouldn't have been who she is today.