My Boyfriend Came Back From the War is a hypertext that allows the viewer to experience an unfolding drama. It uses nonsequential writing so that the reader may experience the drama in different structures depending on which link they choose and in what order they decide to choose them. The hypertext ranges from black and white images to white on black text which one can only assume are pieces of conversation and thoughts from the assumed narrator. The black and whiteness of the hypertext helps enhance a sense of duality throughout the piece, with the narrator switching between phrases of justification and phrases begging for forgiveness. Although there are many orders in which one may read the hypertext, all readers will obtain the same phrases and images with the completion of the hypertext. This limits the reader’s experience with the text in ways that other hypertexts ( Firefly, Hegirascope) do not. I believe this tends to give the hypertext more meaning and prompts more thought than the randomness that many of the other hypertexts have brought us. I found it much easier to form a constructive opinion with this hypertext than with previous ones.
The author takes a subject that almost every generation can identify with, a woman’s time away from the man she loves while he has gone to war. This hypertext is not as abstract as much of the other hypertexts we have studied. The subject does not leave the reader depending upon his or her own interpretation to gather meaning because it is one that has been brought up time and time again, especially in the present day. As a woman I feel it is especially easy to relate to the speaker of the hypertext in her conflict.