Mary Anne Bell In The Things They Carried

Mary Anne adjusted to the life in Vietnam, as did the soldiers that were there, and as time progressed she began to enjoy or get a thrill out of being in Vietnam. "I mean when we first got here-all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne,"(97). The learning curve in war is quickened by the fact that it is a matter of life or death when you are working in a war, and it did not matter who you were the you quickly learned how to operate in a battle field. Mary Anne did not fit in a first and did not know or understand her role in the war, and just like the fresh soldiers coming from America did know or understand their role in the war. As the soldiers, as well as Mary Anne, begin to realize the realities of the war they move their focus away from their homes in America and begin to focus on the work that needed to be accomplished in Vietnam. The physical changes that occur to Mary Anne as she begins to be assimilated into the Vietnam War are like night and day. She came as your typical American girl, but then becomes a fighting soldier looking and anticipating ugly war

Anything can change a person if they are not ready for that change. The short story Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong, in Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien represents this by showing change in Mary Anne, who is a character the reader probably would not expect to see in a book about the Vietnam War. There are many parts show the change in her from the average high school girl she used to be into a predatory killer, but there is only one reason for her change, and that is the war itself.

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

Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing

Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien shows the reader a sense of depressing love. O’Brien uses the physical weight carried by the soldiers as a motif for the emotional burdens they must endure while fighting in Vietnam. A love of which is portrayed in the story with a soldier loving a woman more than his fellow soldiers. But this woman does not love him in the same way. O’Brien uses many literary devices throughout the story, and shall be covered in this text. The tone in the text is very prevalent, and O’Brien gives the reader easy access to find and understand them.

While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the

The Things They Carried is an autobiographical novel written by Tim O’Brien that details his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Considered to be “the best work of fiction ever written about Vietnam, some even think it is the best about war,” (Greenya 1). The stories that are contained within the novel talk about themes such as loss, burdens, and the horrifying truths of the Vietnam War, the first war to take place during a more ‘modern’ era, as the tragedies of the war could be broadcasted through television. Much like many soldiers that fought in the war, Tim O’Brien was forced to face through many tragedies. Due to this, the book is used to preserve those who have died in Tim O’Brien’s life. The two chapters within The Things They Carried develop the importance of O’Brien’s coping mechanism. In The Little Brown Reader, ‘Snapshot: Lost Lives of Women’ by Amy Tan contains a similar structure to the two chapters of O’Brien’s novel. I believe that Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is similar to Amy Tan’s ‘Snapshot: Lost Lives of Women in the structure detailing the past and the idea of keeping people’s lives preserved through the art of storytelling, O’Brien’s last two chapters are essential in showing this similarity.

This chapter covers the transition of Mary Anne Bell, of how she changed from being a normal, sweet teenage girl to being one of the Green Berets, filled with enthusiasm for the war and intrigued with the culture of Vietnam. This message is about how the innocence of women is consumed by the war and how once they begin to learn more about it, they are hopelessly entranced by it, far from returning to their usual selves. Rat talks about how, “Anne made you think about those girls back home, how they'll never understand any of this, not in a billion years. Try and tell them about it, they’ll just stare at you with those big round candy eyes. They won't understand zip.”(O’Brien 108), and this shows that women won’t understand what Vietnam really is like, they have to experience it themselves. Women also won’t understand the grueling mental pain that soldiers experience in the war.

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it.

One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way

In many respects, Tim O 'Brien 's The Things They Carried concerns the relationship between fiction and the narrator. In this novel, O 'Brien himself is the main character--he is a Vietnam veteran recounting his experiences during the war, as well as a writer who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories. These two aspects of the novel are juxtaposed to produce a work of literature that comments not only