Internal and External Conflicts of Walter Burke.
Anthony Groom's novel Bombingham is about a middle-class black family riven by its personal chaos. The title of the book derives from the name that African Americans gave to Birmingham in the 1950s and 60s in response to the violent bombings in their community. When the narrator, Walter Burke, is writing a letter to the parents of his friend who died in the Vietnam War, he is taken back to his childhood during the Civil Right Movement. The majority of the novel occurs in flashback, focusing on the time when Walter was young. The narrator is struggling for everything throughout the novel. He faces so many difficulties and conflicts. The sickness of his mother is one of the big external conflicts. Meanwhile, the involvement in the demonstrations for the Civil Rights Movement produces another conflict to Walter. The narrator struggles to find the meaning of his role in both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement.
The sickness of Walter's mother is a big external conflict. Walter is an eleven- year-old African American boy who lives in a modest little house in Birmingham. His father is a high school science teacher and his mother works as a secretary for a black entrepreneur Mr. Gaston. The family is in balance, a happy home in which the father preachers the virtues of scientific thinking and the mother handles religion for the unit. But the peaceful equilibrium in this family is assaulted when Walter's mother is diagnosed with cancer and she refuses to have any kind of medical help. She relies on her faith and faith healing. The stresses brought on by Walter's mother are intolerable to the whole family. Walter's father drops out of medical school a year before graduation in order to help his family. Walter's father tells Walter to take care of his sister more and not to rely on his mother for the things he used to. Walter is sad even though he doesn't know well about what is cancer, but he knows many people die because of cancer.
