Character Analysis of Mary Anne "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong"

Going back to the Vietnam War and its effect on Mary Anne. At this point, it can be seen that Mary Anne has completely crossed over. She has a necklace of human tongues, which is crazy weird. However, Mary Anne is still wearing her culottes and her pink sweater, the very pieces of clothing that made her appear so American at the beginning of the story. The reason for Mary Anne’s change is not because of the Vietnamese or even Vietnam, even though it appeared to be at the beginning. It's the war itself. The war is half-Vietnamese and half-American. A example that shows Mary Anne going through her change is in the quote, "Mary Anne made you think about those girls back home, how clean and innocent they all are, how they'll never

In the chapter, “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, we meet an interesting character named Mary Anne. She was a seventeen year old lady who just got out of high school and went to visit her boyfriend Mark Fossie in Vietnam. It started out as just visiting a childhood sweetheart, except it all changed in a matter of weeks. Mary Anne began to take too much interest and she became engulfed in vietnam. She wasn’t all too careful, rather than her swallowing the land, she was swallowed whole by it. Vietnam changed Mary Anne into something she never thought that she would become, she changed into a lone soldier, physically, behaviorally and psychologically.

In the “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” a girl by the name of Mary Anne Bell arrives at a military compound. She used to be a civilian until she completely changed while spending time over at Vietnam.

From the moment Mary Anne arrives at the base, the other soldiers know that this was a mistake. But Mark Fossie, blinded by love, doesn’t realize this. He believes that Mary Anne’s innocence could be preserved. But oh how he was wrong. In perhaps the greatest mistake in the entire Vietnam war, a soldier brought his girlfriend to Vietnam. Quickly her innocence disappears, and she turns into something wicked. She wears a necklace of human tongues and begins to take risks not even Ethan Hunt would. She behaves dangerously; she refuses to carry a weapon. This wickedness fundamentally changes Mary Anne’s personality and her attitude toward life. While she feels that she is finding herself, she is instead losing herself. May Anne loses herself to the jungle and the war. Like a hyperbole of the entire Vietnam era, Mary Anne loses her purpose. Around this time, some might say so did the American Dream. Contributing to the entropy of the American Dream, soldiers felt lost, confused, and in a metaphorical fog. Soldiers stopped thinking of the war as just good and bad, and instead as one of lesser

Copious bullets, like that of torrential downpour, reign over the battlefield; a setting in which man created through dispute, engulfs each and every individual caught within it. Some are immediately spun into a downward spiral, while with others, it hits them in the midst -- even if they have built an immunity to war’s ways. Two fictional characters, both sharing a similar atmosphere, experience the true affects to war in their own ways. Although war never changes, the individuals do, no matter the situation. This is exemplified through the fictional tales, told by Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper,” as well as Tim O’Brien’s “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy,” and as the main characters are to each their own story, they bear contradistinction to one another in the aspect of war, personality, and the emotional reactions to war.

The short story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” is a tale of the horrors of war, and how quickly violent experiences can change one from civilized & gentle to uncivilized & inhumane who enjoys killing others. The story tells about an ideal American young girl’s transformation into a savage, who becomes emotionless while visiting her boyfriend, a soldier, in Vietnam. This story shows that a war can bring up the savage characteristics within human beings, whether male or female. This is shown through the development of Mary Anne. Initially she was amiable and innocent, but she rapidly became more disconnected to society & a trained killer. Her story shows the mental transference of humans at war, and how they can be converted from sympathetic people into unsocial, who is capable of performing the most dreadful acts.

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

Premised within an unbelievable scenario is the story of male soldier, Mark Fossie, in the Vietnam War who brings his sweetheart, Mary Anne Belle, to his platoon. While Fossie wishes to uphold the traditional gender dichotomy in a foreign land, he doesn’t consider the effects of a war on a sweetheart. When a person goes to war, “[they] come over clean and [they] get dirty and afterwards it’s never the same” (O’Brien 81). In Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War fiction, The Things They Carried, he explores how humans comprehend the experiences of other humans. To convey his understanding of the inner workings of human perception, he tells a story through Rat Kiley, who “had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement.”

39. O’Brien meticulously incorporates this chapter directly after “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” to portray the counteracting ideals of the role of women and femininity in both sections. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the entire chapter is dedicated to discussing Mary Anne’s somewhat bolstering and heartening presence for Mark Fossie. It demonstrates the ideal view of women’s comforting role during the war and how they provided devoted their entire being in making their counterparts happy. In contrast,“Stockings” demonstrates the ideal of how soldiers were still reassured and remedied by women on the homefront who present the bare-minimum effort. This is ideal is exhibited by Henry Dobbins who is consistently alleviated and invigorated by his girlfriend’s stockings, yet in actuality, she hardy demonstrates affection and compassion for Dobbins, eventually ending their

When Mary Anne first arrives she is wearing white culottes and a pink sweater, as a typical tennager would in the 1960’s. Throughout the chapter, you witness this typical teenager change into a barbaric esque soldier. She cuts her hair short,

Tim O'Brien's book, "The Things They Conveyed," gives profitable understanding into the brains of officers, and edifies us to the enthusiastic and mental expenses of war. In particular, the stories of Mary Anne, the infant water wild ox and the section, "In the Field," assist us with relating to the transformation that fighters experience. While the conspicuous connection for O'Brien's novel is to talk about the physical protests every fighter conveyed were a great deal more critical, including such things as individual questions, reasons for alarm, and dreams.

Mary Anne’s story begins when her boyfriend, a soldier in Vietnam, flies her over to Vietnam so that he can see her. When she first arrives, she looks

The detrimental effects of war on soldiers coming home has been an issue since the beginning of war itself. It has been known by many names; shell shock during WWI, battle fatigue during WWII, and PTSD in modern times. The effects of war is an age old issue addressed in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien uses women as a literary element by portraying women as fantasized for their innocence at first, but are really a metaphor to explain the changes that soldiers experience as a result of war, all to explore the damaging effects that war and PTSD have on the men fighting it.

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.

Mary and Don live a wanderlusting life. During the day, they protest war and encourage peace around their torn suburb in Jamaica Plain. Don and Mary don’t have much, but all they have each other. Together they can do anything. Be anything. As the sun goes down, they work to support each other. To keep their crappy apartment, Mary is a prostitute for local politicians and Don is a street fighter. After evading the war, Don must fight to keep food on the table and try to keep Mary safe from the street. Don league is no professional, but it pays well. As he tries to find a way to get himself and Mary out of their neighbor, and into the life they always wanted for each other, he is presented an opportunity. In his upcoming fight, he must battle