This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin.
-- Narrator (Prologue)

Importance: Benjamin concludes his prologue with these words, framing the novel as a somber and bleak tale. By making the distinction between “war” and “ruin,” he does not necessarily imply that the two are not synonymous or interchangeable, but rather suggests that war is a more general and politically-charged word that does not speak to the more individual experience of living through a war. By revisiting this passage, the reader understands that Benjamin is referring to Sarat’s ruin, and the damaging effects that the war had on her journey as an individual.

A visual reminder of America as it existed in the first half of the twenty-first century: soaring, roaring, oblivious.
-- Narrator (Prologue)

Importance: Here, Benjamin refers to his postcards as mementos of a better past. He figures America in a time (more than a century before the narrator's present) that corresponds...