Summary
Her Boy" unfurls a poignant domestic drama against the cataclysmic backdrop of the Great War, meticulously dissecting the suffocating grip of maternal devotion. As the United States plunges into the European maelstrom, Helen, a widow consumed by the specter of losing her sole progeny, David, finds her possessive love clashing violently with her son's emergent adulthood and patriotic zeal. David, having just reached his majority, initially champions the war effort, urging his factory peers to enlist, yet he succumbs to his mother's desperate pleas, postponing his own service. This fragile truce shatters when the draft notice arrives, propelling Helen into an act of profound, if misguided, deception. She deliberately falsifies David's birth certificate, retroactively implying his illegitimacy, a desperate gambit to render him ineligible for conscription. This egregious breach of trust and identity so repulses David that he defiantly enlists under an assumed name, severing ties with the shame his mother's actions have cast upon him. The ensuing public confession of Helen's transgression before the townspeople marks a harrowing nadir, setting the stage for a climactic, albeit somewhat abrupt, reconciliation with her uniformed son, a fragile peace salvaged from the wreckage of a mother's pathological fear.
Synopsis
When the United States enters World War I, widow worries that she will lose her only son David, who has just turned 21. Although David patriotically urges the employees at his factory to enlist, he reluctantly gives in to his mother's pleas to remain at home with her. When David is drafted, his panic-stricken mother alters the date on his birth certificate, although the later birth date implies that he is illegitimate. Disgusted, David enlists under an assumed name, thus shaming Helen, who confesses her dishonesty to the townspeople. Her son, now in uniform, then forgives her.
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