The War Came Home With Him Sparknotes

The demographic of adults who write autobiographies do so largely because of some type of silence they faced in childhood, and possibly into their adult life. This silence can often be attributed to a hardship faced at some time during their life which the authors overcame and are ready to delve into how that affected them as adults. In Catherine Madison’s The War Came Home with Him, she recounts not only her struggles as a child growing up in the aftermath of a war, but also the struggles of a man who never truly came home from Korea. The book explores the complex cycle of silence that is imposed from one generation to the next; her father being silenced by the Koreans as a prisoner of war for three years, and the silence she faced under his draconian parenting, making it relatively useful as a historical document.
After much prompting from his daughter throughout his life, Catherine’s father attempted to put into words the horrors that he endured as a prisoner of war. The silence of being a prisoner provided him with a reason to write his life story, or at least his story of the war. It wasn't until his death, however, that Madison discovered that he had in fact listened to her, and she took it upon herself to make sure his story was heard. Upon receiving some prompting of her own from friends, Madison decided to tell her story as well, as a way of opening up the discussion on the affects of war on