Texas

Texas is Aaron’s point of origin, not the setting of the village episodes shown here. It enters the story through his identity as a volunteer who has come from the state to work at a school, and through the contrast between expectations attached to Texas and the difficult experience for which his Peace Corps training did not prepare him.

Aaron’s Point of Origin

During Aaron’s first week in the village, Grace asked which part of America he came from. When he answered Texas, she remarked that she had expected Texans to be large, like cowboys, whereas Aaron seemed an ordinary size. Her comment makes the state a shorthand for a familiar image of America, which Aaron’s appearance immediately unsettles. Texas is thus established through someone else’s expectation as much as through Aaron’s own account of where he came from.

Distance from the Village

Aaron had come from Texas to volunteer at the school, and the accommodation provided there was a small, unpleasant house. He told Grace that the school had supplied it and that there was nothing to be done, although he had complained about the arrangement to his Peace Corps supervisors from his first day. His answer to Grace presents the housing as unavoidable; his complaints reveal that he had not simply accepted it.

On his last evening in the village, Aaron prepared to leave after a series of experiences that had left him humiliated and powerless. Thinking of Grace and of what he should have been taught, he concluded that his Peace Corps training had taught him none of the things he needed to know. Texas remains the far-off origin of that journey, while the story’s emphasis falls on the gulf between the volunteer’s preparation and the realities he encountered after leaving home.