Identity as a Compilation of Mona, Addie, and Billy Pilgrim

A major theme in Mona In the Promised Land is the disconnection of Mona from her traditional Chinese culture. The implications of her break with her culture include a salvation through her Judaism, as well as the exclusion from her family as a rebellious younger daughter, destined to fail in the shadow of their Harvard-attendee: Callie. However, Mona learns for herself that there is no prescription family and that her role in her own family is what she defines it to be. This revelation, though, does not come without many doubts and grievances. After beau Sherman Matsumoto, a Japanese student, tells her that "she will need to study how to switch [to be his Japanese wife]" (21) Mona always dwells on where she fits in the classification system of America, and of China, and of Judaism. The Chinese and Japanese have words which define such concepts as "the world of politeness and obligation" and "the world of true feeling, and intimacy -- the world without words" and "the world of what is hidden in the heart," however Mona is neither Chinese nor Japanese. She is a Chinese-American Jew. Where does she fit within these definitions?

On her deathbed, Addie Bundren shares the same kind of inadequacy of words:

Why are you Anse. I would think about his name until after a while I could see

the word as a shape, a vessel, and I would watch him liquify and flow into it like a cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel, until the jar stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame; and then I would find that I had forgotten the name of the jar. I would think: The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is in the shape of

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... These clues and puzzle pieces come through the culture and the society of the time and of the character's chosen social surroundings. Mona found herself through her Judaism because that was a choice she made for herself to follow; Addie found herself on her deathbed to be the central focus of her family; Billy found himself through the Tralfamadorians and their view on a human life span allowed Billy Pilgrim to live his life without consequences, as he pleased. As American literature, an identity can be found through all of these stories. It is the common story of Mona and of Addie and of Billy Pilgrim by which America and American literature truly is defined- in the search for one's self in this "salad bowl" of a country. Like Mona and Addie and Billy, it is through our society and our culture and our literature by which we define ourselves and our generation.