Week 9 assigned topic

Explication of "Missing": In "Missing" there is a particular scene that embodies the theme of the entire narrative. I believe that the the realization that you can't really ever bury your true identity or escape it no matter where you move to is the true theme of the story, and the scene where his daughter Hoa appears and he describes her appearance really lightens the scene and helps him realize how he has not escaped his past and that he has broken traditional barriers in this Vietnam village. In the scene it says, "And Hoa appeared. 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, and I don't know why I was caught by her hair at that moment but it is long and it has this color that belongs to no one else here, not my wife, not me." At this point he realizes that he has mixed his culture of U.S. and Vietnamese to create his daughter who he loves very much but reminds him of his past life over in America. He describes her hair as the color brown of the dried tobacco and not black which is the usual color of vietnamese hair and then describes her skin as the color of the coffee that they grow and sell there which is a reference to him thinking of her as a symbol of the same thing that they export over to America. What we take from this scene is how he sees America in his daughter. Another scene that relates to this is later in the story where he says, "But I looked again at Hoa and she was bending to the table and she picked up the dragon head and turned to face Tri's daughter and I could see Hoa's face for a moment there, caught full in the sunlight, and in this light the parts of her body that she had because of me seemed very clear, the highness of her brow, the half expressed roundness of the lids of her eyes, the length of her nose, the wideness of her mouth, her hair neither dark nor light. And I had a twist of sadness for her, as if she had gotten from me imperfect cells that had made a club foot or an open spine or a weak heart." Here he says the parts of the body she has because of me and then he goes on to describe these and eventually feel saddened for here because he knows the expectations of the village here and how it feels to be an outcast and the doesn't want that for his daughter so he is sad that he gave her these genes that makes her appear different than the "normal" vietnamese in the village. These examples prove that no matter where he goes he will always see reminders of his past, he will always be reminded of his past because it's something that you can run away from but never truly escape.