Vietnam War

The Vietnam War is recalled through William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s memories of carrying protest signs and courting Lily amid demonstrations. That past becomes a measure of change when he watches a much smaller campus cause—protests against him over the death of one goose—unfold decades later. The contrast joins political memory to the book’s broader concern with aging, missed opportunities, and the uses people make of their past.

Memory of Protest

Watching protesters gather by the campus pond, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. compares their numbers with those of the demonstrations he remembers from his own days as a sign carrier. The current crowd is larger than it was the previous day, but still far smaller than the Vietnam War protests. The comparison registers both the scale of the earlier demonstrations and the changed object of protest: now the demonstrators oppose him over the death of a single goose.

The memory is personal as well as political. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Lily courted through a series of protests, which he regards as more worthy than the present demonstration. He remembers his wife carrying a sign as fierce, beautiful, strong, and good. In the scene, the recollection briefly turns the crowd before him into a possible echo of his own youth: he wonders whether a young woman among the protesters might catch the attention of a young man watching her.

April and the Present Demonstration

The protest takes place in April, a month William Henry Devereaux, Jr. associates with ideal conditions for public indignation. Spring break has ended, the warmer weather makes being outdoors inviting, and finals are only two weeks away. A demonstration can thus supply a moral rationale for leaving the dorm, classroom, or library. His account holds conviction and convenience together: the protest may be sincere, yet its timing also offers students a break from ordinary obligations.

The setting sharpens the contrast between the remembered demonstrations and the current one. A television van occupies a VIP parking space near the pond, and the protesters’ chanting carries into his car despite its closed windows. Their visible presence is substantial enough to command attention, but the cause remains the death of one goose and the target is William Henry Devereaux, Jr. The old protests give him a scale against which to judge this spectacle, while his own involvement makes the comparison uncomfortable rather than detached.

Youthful Possibility and Later Life

The Vietnam-era memories sit within a wider reflection on the lives William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and his colleagues once expected to lead. Looking back, he considers how they had imagined themselves destined for better things, only to spend their academic careers at West Central Pennsylvania University in Railton. In middle age, their daily proximity to one another brings missed opportunities back into view. The earlier protest years therefore represent not only public action but a remembered period against which later disappointments can be measured.

That retrospective mood recurs as William Henry Devereaux, Jr. confronts physical and professional diminishment. At fifty, he loses a two-set tennis match to Julie, who runs him from sideline to sideline and no longer responds to his familiar attempts to distract her. He also accepts a move from left field to first base, a position he can play competently but finds less inspiring. Tony Coniglia describes this stage of life as the Season of Grace, using Beowulf’s loss of his former strength as an analogy. These later reflections extend the entry’s central contrast: the past remains vivid, but remembering youthful possibility does not restore it. Instead, the protests William Henry Devereaux, Jr. recalls become part of a larger reckoning with what time has changed and what opportunities have gone unused.