Vietnam War Era

The Vietnam War Era is the pressure under which Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey come of age: military service, college, and defense work appear as competing paths through a world shaped by the draft. In their household, those choices expose a deeper disagreement about safety, authority, and who gets to decide the twins’ future. The war also binds private fear to the region’s industrial economy, from the submarine work at Electric Boat to the later decline of the shipyard.

The war enters the Birdsey household

The war becomes personal for Ma through the death of Billy Covington, a young man four years older than her sons. She puts his photograph beside the family portraits, prays novenas for his soul, and grieves when she sees his mother passing the house. Dominick initially regards this response as excessive; only later does he understand that Billy’s death made the danger to her own boys feel immediate. If a young man like Billy could be killed, neither twin was beyond the reach of the war.

Ray’s experience points in the opposite direction. A veteran of World War II and Korea, he regards antiwar protestors with hostility and presents military service as a practical choice. He argues that draftees are being sent to Vietnam while men who enlist retain more control over their decisions. Ma, however, sees the possibility of college as protection. The disagreement is not simply about money or education: it is a clash between Ray’s faith in disciplined work and service and Ma’s fear that the war might take her sons.

College, enlistment, and work

Ray opposes paying two college tuitions, doubts the value and politics of universities, and insists that able-bodied young men should work or enter the Navy. He proposes another route through Electric Boat, where the twins could train as apprentice pipe fitters, electricians, or welders; some of those jobs, he says, carry deferments. His suggestion makes the local shipyard part of the family’s argument about the war: building submarines is work, income, and a way to avoid being sent to Vietnam, even as Ray describes it as contributing to the military effort.

Ma’s support for college rests on a different calculation. The later death of Billy Covington has made the danger of the war harder for her to dismiss, and education seems to offer her sons a chance to stay out of it. Ray controls the household finances and challenges her authority to judge what the family can afford. When she insists that the cost is not the point, he bangs his fist on the table, accuses the twins of taking too much, and then gives her the silent treatment. The war intensifies a conflict already structured by money and by Ray’s control over family decisions.

The twins’ own work experience gives the industrial alternative a concrete form. After their first year of college, Dominick and Thomas take seasonal, minimum-wage jobs with the Three Rivers Public Works Department. The work is physically demanding, but Dominick welcomes the paycheck and the chance to spend the day outdoors rather than confined with books or in a dorm room with his brother. Their summer labor does not resolve the debate over their futures; it shows that paid work can mean both independence and a temporary escape from the tensions at home.

Public celebration and private unease

The novel sets patriotic spectacle against the violence of the war. During the Moon landing, Dominick recognizes the achievement as a stunning technological feat but objects to its triumphant national framing while the United States is napalming Vietnam. Ray, meanwhile, buys a television to celebrate. The same event thus gathers technological pride, patriotism, and unease about the war into one family moment: national accomplishment does not silence the question of what the country is doing elsewhere.

The region after the war economy

The novel’s later view of eastern Connecticut extends the Vietnam-era tension into a longer economic history. Electric Boat, once the region’s economic backbone and a major submarine manufacturer, later lays off most of its workforce; residents call the diminished shipyard the ghost yard. The story contrasts that decline with the growth of the Wequonnoc Moon Casino, opened in 1992, as gaming replaces defense work as a source of regional employment. Seen across this wider timeline, the war years’ promise of security through military service and submarine construction belongs to a shifting local economy, not a permanent settlement. The era’s stakes therefore persist beyond the battlefield: they shape family choices, the twins’ ideas of safety, and the kinds of work Three Rivers can offer.