 Near the end of the film, the National Guard is stationed around the school and is ordered to open fire on the students, killing four and wounding hundreds more.The entire story is told in flashbacks by Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor, Laughlin's real-life wife), a teacher at the school, from her hospital bed after the shooting incident.The violence in the finale is a symbolic bookend to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians seen in the beginning of the film.