Week Nine Assigned Topic

“Missing” is a very intriguing story full of detail and I feel that one paragraph towards the end really helps convey the theme of the story. It starts out with the main character going off by himself and looking at his hands, commenting that his skin wasn’t as dark as most the adults in his village. He says his skin “could be the skin of a Vietnamese child” (Butler). This is an important metaphor because he is like a child in the community because he has only been there a few years. Before he stumbled into the village his skin was white and he had no family to love and call his own. Once he becomes a part of this community and he starts a family, his skin begins changing to look more like theirs. His whiteness symbolized his lack of family and love, and now that void is slowly being filled as his skin grows darker.

He goes on to say that the only things keeping him from looking like a Vietnamese child are the “blonde hairs on my knuckles” (Butler). These hairs are reminders of his old life in America, and all the pain that comes with it. “I looked at my arm and there was a forest of blonde hair on this dark arm, and I was on the porch swing… I rose but always came down again” (Butler). When he sees this visual reminder of his past life all of his feelings and memories about it come flooding back. It’s as if the porch swing was carrying him away from his broken and violent home, but it never left its chains and he was stuck there, always bringing him back down and next to the door of his house. “Against all that I desperately desired, I would go in” (Butler).

Thematically, what these metaphors are telling us is that the character desperately wants to replace his old life with a new peaceful one. However, replacing it will never work because it will always be there no matter what, as long as his blond hairs are there to remind him. What he really needs to do it accept his past, move on from it, and make the most of his new life. As people we all want to be loved and accepted and some of the hardest moments in our lives are the ones where we lack that, where we feel unimportant or replaceable. The main character finally accepts his old life for what it is by explaining it to his new life; his daughter, his wife, and his village.