A Study Guide for Bobbie Ann Mason's "In Country"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Bobbie Ann Mason's "In Country," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535825771

Book preview

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In Country

Bobbie An Mason

1985

Introduction

In Country was the first novel that Bobbie Ann Mason had published. Until just a few years earlier, she had been an unknown college teacher. Her first book of fiction, Shiloh, and Other Stories, was a great critical success. The short story collection earned nominations for the National Book Critics Circle award, the American Book Award, and the P.E.N./Faulkner Award for fiction. Critics and readers awaited the publication of In Country with much anticipation.

The book, which takes place in western Kentucky, concerns a teenage girl's questions about the war in Vietnam, where her father died and her uncle served. Unlike many serious works of literature, which generally avoid current events because they will soon be outdated, the novel has constant cultural references that were fresh when it was published in 1984. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for instance, which is central to the story, had been dedicated as recently as 1982, and the Bruce Springsteen album that is quoted in the epigram and mentioned frequently thereafter was released in 1984.

In addition to the timely cultural references, the characters that Mason presented also helped her gain a broader audience than many novelists enjoy. These characters do not have their interests and sensibilities formed by reading literature, but, like most Americans, they know life through the references that the consumer culture has given them. McDonald's, Holiday Inn and the shopping mall are all not just abstract, but significant pieces of their lives. In Country, like most of Bobbie Ann Mason's works, succeeds in using the mundane aspects of modern life in a search for greater meaning.

Author Biography

Bobbie Ann Mason was born in 1940 in Mayfield, a small town in western Kentucky, and she grew up outside of the town's limits, attending a rural school like Sam's father did in In Country. In 1962 Mason graduated from the University of Kentucky with her Bachelor of Arts degree. She then went to New York for a year, writing for fan magazines, such as Movie Star, Movie Life, and T.V. Star Parade before returning to school for postgraduate work. In 1966 she received her Master of Arts degree from the State University of New York, and in 1972 she was awarded a Ph.D. from University of Connecticut. Her doctoral thesis, Nabokov's Garden: A Guide to Ada, was published as a book in 1974, and The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide to The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Their Sisters was published in 1975.

During the late 1970s, while teaching journalism at Mansfield State College in Pennsylvania, Mason began writing short stories, developing her unique style from her observations of life. Looking back, she has expressed amusement at the arrogance that led her to send the second story she wrote to The New Yorker, arguably the most prestigious magazine that a writer could be published in. The polite rejection they sent