Essay about Change In The Things They Carried

Through the writing the reader has a clear picture of the war and through every retelling, no matter how fabricated it is, O’Brien wraps the reader in feeling, feeling as if every aspect is true. In the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” we are introduced to Mary Anne Bell, the gutsy and curious girlfriend of Mark Fossie. The story is told by Rat Kiley who has a knack for exaggeration. Even still, as O’brien relays the story of the once cute, young girl losing her innocence and her mind in the jungle the reader can’t help but feel as if the story is the happening-truth. The effect Mary Anne has on the reader is too strong to be swept aside as fake.

"You won't believe how incredibly ignorant I was. I knew vaguely that a war had started, but I had no idea what it meant (108).” Or they were so happy to be in the position that they war had left them in financially, that they simply wanted it to continue. Peggy Terry remember a woman telling her that, "she hoped the war didn't end until she got her refrigerator paid for (112)." Killingsworth also contributes to the unmindfulness that was associated towards the war, "So right away they started hirin. I think the war had kind of a pleasure. People didn't realize the seriousness of the war. All they were thinkin about is they had lived in these Depression days. It was hard to come by a dollar (116)." Dellie Hahne was a college student at the time, she was in the same position as these other women, she recognized the war but the advantages that were available overshadowed the real casualties of the war occurring (117). "While my conscience told me the war was a terrible thing, bloodshed and misery, there was excitement in the air. I had just left college and was working as a substitute teacher. Life was fairly dull. Suddenly, single women were of tremendous importance (117)." The idea of having a responsibility outside the home and money for themselves overshadowed the cause of their newfound lives. Women benefited from this new beginning, it was surely an introduction towards a movement forward for women.

In the short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien, the author shows that no matter what the circumstances were, the people that were exposed to the Vietnam War were affected greatly. A very young girl named Mary Anne Bell was brought by a boyfriend to the war in Vietnam. When she arrived she was a bubbly young girl, and after a few weeks, she was transformed into a hard, mean killer.

Mary Anne learns how to clean, assemble and use weapons. She was described as having “D-cup guts, trainer bra brains.” (96) because she was so eager to learn everything, fear was not a factor. After joining the Green Berets on night time ambushes, Mary Anne started to look and act more like a soldier. Mary Anne’s appearance started to change, “no cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark green bandana” (99), as though those things were no longer important to her. Her bubbliest seemed to be gone and her body starts to become harder in places it was once soft,”even her once bright blue eyes had transformed into a bright glowing jungle green (107). Mary Anne starts changing her ideas on her plans, still wanting to get married but not right away, wanting to live together first and “just test it out” and maybe not have three kids (99). At one time, those things were very important to Mary Anne, Fossie did not understand Mary Anne’s transformation. She was like most of the young men who went off to war in the way that her innocence was dissipating quickly. However, unlike a lot of the others, her thirst for combat and everything Vietnam continued to increase.

"The Things They Carried," is a story about drafted soldiers during the Vietnam era who were sent to the Vietnam War. The author, Tim O’Brien, describes the things that the men carry during their tour of duty. The items carried are both physical and impalpable items and what these things are is subject to the individual soldier. They carry the necessities for survival in the jungles of Vietnam as well as the personal things each soldier feels necessary to make life as comfortable as possible. Additionally, each of the men carries the memories and fears of past and present experiences. The heaviness of the impalpable items is as tangible as that of any physical item, and not so easy to cast away. The literary argument in which the novel

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Furthermore, some women enlisted in the armies disguised as males, others found they could contribute their service to the war through acting as scouts. For those women that enlisted, changing their dress was only a small fraction of the work required to blend in to their brigade. Hiding all feminine characteristics including the ways, in which they walked, talked, sat, and acted was necessary to avoid detection (Eggleston 2). An abundance of radical periodicals and writings intended for a female audience emerged at the beginning of the war (Endres 32). With ample encouragement women found it within their interests to take an active role in the fight. Some, including Elizabeth Van Lew, simply desired for the feuding between the regions to end and found espionage to be their contribution (Kane 235). In “Companions of Crisis: The Spy Memoir as a Social Document”, Curtis Carroll Davis depicts the female scouts perceiving their duty to their country to be through espionage. Surprisingly, men, including fathers and other patriarchal figures, actively sought the help of their female kin to play an active role in the war through espionage. For instance, the father of Antonia Ford encouraged his daughter to entertain and extract information from Union officers on behalf of the Confederate cause (Eggleston 97). The passion for liberty was undoubtedly just as

To begin, Anne was a selfless, outgoing, and positive young girl that had to live in hiding. Anne was always positive during the time of the war,

            Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam War.

If the women’s secret had been discovered, the soldiers did not do much except send the women back home. Some women treated soldiers who were wounded or sick coming from the battlefield, and they supplied the men with the equipment and other necessities they would need on the field. During the Civil War, Columbus, Mississippi became a well-known hospital town, taking in hundreds of the wounded. Women offered to become spies for the Confederacy to help the military gain useful information about the opposing side, and men did not commonly consider women, such as Rose O’Neal Greenhow capable of doing acts such as spying. Some Southern Democratically-involved women turned their noses from the Northern women in disgust, thinking it unbecoming to be around Republicans, and they continued this attitude for quite some time. But not all Southern women wanted the war, and they did not want to be rude to the “enemy”. One woman, Sarah Morgan, who had been treated well by the enemy said, “Fine, noble-looking men they were. One cannot help but admire such foes! . . .” In these cases where the enemy showed such acts of kindness, many Southern women felt respect and sympathy towards the Union soldiers. Though many of these opportunities for new roles for women opened up during the war, most women stayed at home and took care of their house and children.

     In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.

The more days Mary Anne spent in Vietnam the more she became interested in the culture of war discovering her curious nature. She would listen carefully to the stories she was told and was intrigued by the land and its mystery. Vietnam gave her a new strength, the ability to choose for herself where she would go and who she would become. Anne figuratively became “a different person… there was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself”. As Vietnam empowered Mary Anne and gave her a new personality the men could not understand and they began to see an inequity in Mary Anne, but in a true war story there is no morality. Mary Anne was just doing what the men have always done. She stopped taking baths, and spent more of her time hunting and exploring Vietnam with the Greenies. Sometimes she would get so cut up with the forest and sleep out, leaving Mark Fossie hopeless. Mark was able to notice the changes occurring in Mary Anne, this suddenly made him paranoid and extremely disturbed. Because Mark was not affected by the land like Anne was, he was unable to relate to Anne anymore because his way of viewing things, his perception and reality, is no longer

War never changes, but people do. In Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong a young medic decides to fly his high school sweetheart, Mary Anne, to Vietnam so they can spend time together after he discovers the lack of discipline in camp. When Mary Anne arrives she is innocent, bubbly, flirtatious, and curious with blonde hair, long legs, and blue eyes. Her curiosity gets her involved in some of the medical activities in camp, then she starts assembling guns and visiting local towns. Mary Anne gets hooked. She cuts her hair, stops wearing makeup and jewelry, and no longer wants to get married and settle down with Mark. In Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong Tim O’Brien communicates the power that Vietnam and the war had in absorbing and contorting people.

Although some may argue that Mary Anne Bell was a symbol for overcoming sexist stereotypes, she was in fact a symbol for what soldiers transitioned through everyday--her change parallels and exaggerates their stories. O’Brien’s changing description of Mary Anne epitomizes the hypnotic effect that war has. Mary Anne was ‘a tall big boned blonde’ (89) an ‘attractive girl’ (90), ‘coy and flirtatious’ (91), but ‘the wilderness seemed to draw her in’ (100) and soon she ‘cut her hair short’ (92) and wore ‘a necklace of human tongues, [that were] elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, one tongue overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable’ (105-106). Mary Anne’s description of being ‘a tall

Yet besides a simple suggestion that it is the woman’s job to look after the children, Anne doesn’t tell Mary that her behavior is egotistical, and actually uses Mary’s outburst to avoid seeing Captain Wentworth by suggesting that she herself will look after the child (41). Anne does not challenge Mary’s poor behavior even when it is blatantly selfish and even compromises with her in order to further avoid a different type of confrontation.