“Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings.”
This statement encompasses the essence of the narrative which entails an old woman whose past has weighed her down. The assertion follows after she sees photographs of her as a young girl back at Riverton where everything she regrets took place. Grace has kept dark secrets of the people she was around as a young girl. She has kept the fact that the death of Robbie was not a suicide but rather a homicide that was committed by Hannah. The present sequence of events resurrects Grace’s guilt and shame choosing to confess the truth to her grandson through tapes.
“I understood somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost.”
The quotation alludes to the idea of trauma in that it is an ordeal that can only be understood by the victim. Furthermore, it demonstrates the gravity of post-trauma among soldiers since the major conflict in the narrative is due to PTSD. In this period PTSD was a less known condition that was not fully understood by the medical world let alone the general public. The fear and paranoia harbored by the victims can be triggered by everyday images or sounds that do not necessarily affect a normal individual.
