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EACH OF THE LETTERS REPRESENTS THE EXPERIENCE OF HUNDREDS OF YOUNG MEN. HOW DOES THE TEXT COMMUNICATE THE HUMANITY OF THE CONFLICT?

The epilogue of the text is a letter written post-war from a mother to her dead son Bill. Eleanor Wimbish’s depth of love for her son and suffering over his loss is put to the reader and though it lays bare one of the primary cruelties of war, the anguish of a parent at the death of their child, the implied reader sees that Edelman has used her story to show the strength that people draw from their ability to be connected. Wimbish’s letter gained media coverage and in this she touched many others, including another mother who found relief in a shared grief. While Wimbish asks, ‘…how can I help her with her pain when I have never been able to cope with my own?’, the reader understands that the links people make with each other when they communicate substantiates humanity. From the waste of the Vietnam War, love has found a way to come to the fore and soothe those who remain. ‘But this I know. I would rather … all the pain that goes with losing you, than never to have had you at all’, concludes Wimbish.