Summary Of Sister By Lam

In “Sister”, Lam depicts a character of a woman named Eevie who is experiencing and dealing with post-traumatic disorder caused by his bitter memories surviving in her escape from the Civil War erupting in Vietnam. She has experienced flashback, nightmare, feeling of anxiety, and physical pain whenever she is trying to deal with her trauma that is closely-related to her home country. She has met with her psychologist and told him that “he’s leaving me. He’s going to some place I don’t know”(123). All this time, she feels worry if her brother, Little Demon leave her behind as his brother is going to ‘place’ which refers to revisiting past memories. Little Demon seems to start revisiting his childhood memories of the Civil War regardless of him suffering so much to survive from the tragic event. Towards the beginning of the story, he has called her sister and informed her “in the little boy’s voice he uses when he’s very excited” that he “just called home” (112,113). He is very excited to know that
Vietnam is still exist and the fact that “it’s just gone on without [him and her sister] (116). Little Demon is not scared to look back his past like her sister. Like Eevie, he also experienced strange dream which keep reminding him of his memories in Vietnam but the way he deal with the memories in different way compare to Eevie. He decides to revisit the past in order to “confirm [his memories is real], to feel it in my guts”. Despite of how hard he tries to remind Eevie to what they called ‘home’, he still cannot take her along with him to the ‘place’ as Eevie seems to resist everything that triggers her memories of the Civil war survival. This clearly shows that little Demon is trying so hard to go back and examine his past without her sister as both of them cope with the flashbacks in different way. When Eevie says she do not know the ‘place’, it implies that she is trying to avoid the past memories by substituting it. She pretends that she do not care about the memories as she has already replaced it with new memories in America. “America had offered itself to her first as a vision of stability and progression…A house, a car, a job, a husband-a future”. In America, she thrives so hard to achieve the American Dreams as a way for her to replace those irritating memories and pretend that it never exists. After all her struggle, “she got especially good at selling the American dream to others”. The American dreams that she has achieved has helps her to forget the memories and thus, it makes it hard for her to let his brother to revisit the past. Hence, he gets very anxious when her brother is leaving her to the memories that she has been trying and pretending to forget very hard for a long time. Eevie is struggling so hard to go the ‘place’; the past memories but at the end she cannot because “it took all [her] strength”.
She says to her psychologist:“ I can’t deal with that”. She cannot deal with her past experience like Little Demon does. Due to her having post-traumatic disorder, she keeps feels worried and scared whenever Little Demon and Mrs. Littman remind her of her origin. It take out all her strength to care about her past because she know that her past memories are all about ‘the father died in battle, and the mother drowned at sea” and “ a weepy child whose life depended solely on her willpower”(117). She also has a hard time to sleep at night and experience physical pain after her brother calls her and bring along the memories with him. Whenever she has those memories in mind, she always doubt herself whether to let it go or not. Hence, Eevie cannot go to the ‘place’ as to go there means to experience the bitter moment once
again. In conclusion, the word ‘place’ refers to the past memories during the Civil War that Eevie and Little Demon has corresponding to the fact that Little Demon has shown improvement in dealing with the memories and Eevie who has tried so hard to forget and requires all her strength. Overall it is due to Eevie and her brother has different way in dealing with the painful past.