Don Not Go Don T Go Analysis

1. Just a gathering of mothers (pp. 76). The photo albums were thick with memory: hairstyles, running meets, graduations (pp. 76). They were all so different, so little in common (pp. 78). No newspapers big enough to paste him back together in Saigon (pp. 81). The only thing you need to know about war, son, is: Don’t go (pp. 86). Mother seeks bones of son (pp. 90). That’s my boy up there and he’s come to say hello (pp. 98.) At all of their coffee mornings, it had always been distant, belonging to another day, the talk, the memory, the recall, the stories, a distant land, but this was now and real, and the worst thing was that they didn’t know the walker’s fate, didn’t know if he had jumped or fallen or had got down safely, or if he was still …show more content…
It was the type of hospital that looked like it needed a hospital (pp. 135). Now it was time to go home, but I had taken on this man’s bloodstained baggage (pp. 136). Walls, water, guardrails (pp. 137). An unknown man’s life (pp. 138). On a half-wall someone had written: DANTE HAS ALREADY DISAPPEARED (pp. 138). The black bloodstains were still visible (pp. 142). It looked like the door locks had been jimmied a number of times (pp. 142.) A hum came from the expressway, but the closer I got to the graveyard the more the smell of fresh-cut grass filled the air (pp. 144). The children were dressed in perfect white, but the women’s clothes looked like they’d been cobbled together, the skirts too short, the heels too high, their cleavage covered with wraparound scarves (pp. 144). There was a crackle of something between us: cars as bodies, crashing (pp. 151). That old human flaw of desire (pp. …show more content…
An example of extremely terse phrasing in the support group’s world is this description of the gray streak in Claire’s hair, “A road in my hair. Do not overtake.” Although the sentence lacks traditional structure, the simple mention of a “road” describes Claire’s appearance so completely that further description is unnecessary. In Lara and Blaine’s world, Lara uses extremely terse phrasing such as “It was the gentlest tap. A small screech of tires,” to lessen the severity of Lara and Blaine’s involvement in Corrigan’s accident. An example of powerfully descriptive phrasing in the support group’s world is the phrase “his knocking was like that against a coffin lid,” referring to the sergeant who informed Claire of her son’s death. Connecting a menial task to something so morbid communicates Claire’s dread in that moment. Similarly, from Lara comes this powerfully descriptive phrase, “The stars above were little pinpoints of light. The longer I looked the more they seemed like little claw marks,” which demonstrates Lara’s deteriorating emotional