Mary Anne's Innocence In The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried Mary Anne Bell is affected mentally because she is snuck into the men’s camp. When she arrives she is this clean and naive high school student. While she is there, she starts to learn how to do what the men do around the camp. Mary Anne is not the same girl she was when she arrived. She is sneaking off to go plan an ambush with the Greenies and she comes back from the ambush covered in dirt, and wearing a necklace of tongues. In “Soldiers Home” Krebs mother because when he returns from the war, Krebs feels like he can no longer connect with his mother. War affects people

As Ray Kiley describes it, “She was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very friendly, too,” (89). Mary Anne is immature and naive, but also very curious. She is curious of Army machines and also of the Vietnamese culture. Like many other Americans, Mary Anne feels that the war is easily winnable and that she is untouchable, even in a foreign land. At one point she strips down to her underwear and swims in the Song Tra Bong, a Vietnamese river, even after Fossie explains that there are likely snipers

In the fictional novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien vividly explains the fear and trauma the soldiers encountered during the Vietnam War. Many of these soldiers are very young and inexperienced. They begin to witness their acquaintances’ tragic demise, and kill other innocent lives on their own. Many people have a background knowledge on the basis of what soldiers face each day, but they don’t have a clear understanding of what goes through these individual’s minds when they’re at war. O’Brien gives descriptive details on the soldiers’ true character by appealing to emotions, using antithesis and imagery.

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

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes a chapter on “The Man I Killed”, which describes the characteristics of a young Vietnamese man in which O’Brien may or may not have killed with a grenade. The novel is not chronologically sequenced, which leaves more room for the reader to engage in a critical thought process that fully bridges the author’s mind to their own. In O’Brien’s chapter, “The Man I Killed”, he attempts to humanize the enemy in a way that draws little separation between the enemy and himself by relating the enemy’s life prior to the war to his, and illustrates the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it.

Mary Anne made her first appearance in the Vietnam War on a helicopter that would fly supplies in and out of the medical base in Chu Lai. She wore some “white culottes … and a pink sweater” when she first arrive because it was what she enjoyed to wear because she was still young( O’Brien 86) . She was described as having “ long white legs, blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream” this is what the men thought of her when they saw her walking around the base with Mark Frossie (O’Brien 89). Mary Anne was very “curious about things” always asking questions

In the past, she would not imagine killing other people. She became a new person with a new name in order to kill the enemies, the men on the hills during the war. She first hesitated if she would be able to end the life of another human, but soon made the decision that the men on the hills, her targets were expendable. If she didn’t shoot them it was going to be her and the countless other innocent lives. “A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made”.

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.

When she first arrived at the medical base it was incongruous because all the men that were at the medical base surrounded her. In the beginning her main personality was bubbly and because of it men genuinely liked her. She was too wide in the shoulders, but she had terrific legs, and a happy smile. The guys at the base don’t take advantage of her because the guys respect her and befriend her because she is willing to learn and experience everything in an open mind. Mary Anne’s appearance affects the men by reminding the few who were away from home for a long time by her physical appearance, personality, and the fact that she is a female. The fact that she is a woman did matter in the beginning but as the people there got to know about her, the fact that she was a female didn’t change anything. The reason it did matter is because no women was there at that kind of time and environment. Also since she was a female and the place was surrounded with lots of men, she could be vulnerable. The reason it doesn’t matter as time went on is because she showed that she is just the same as any soldier or that any soldier should be. The story tells us that the nature of the Vietnam War by telling us the characters that were there and what they did when they were there. The characters themselves explain one another and what they themselves are going at that

Mary Anne was in Vietnam during the war which “had the effect of a powerful drug [..] she wanted more, she

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

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the man is drafted into the Vietnam War where he faces many obstacles mentally and physically. The characters are heavily impacted by the war’s power and try to find ways within themselves to escape its brutality. The author uses language and character’s reactions to their inner conflicts to illustrate the mental stresses that arise in war.

Bao Ninh’s novel The Sorrow of War tells a very realistic and explicit story of Kien, a North Vietnamese soldier and writer, during the Vietnam War. Kien manages to survive, usually by luck, through battles and

DID MARY ANNE GO MAD???????I personally believe that Mary Anne had these feelings inside of her. However, seeing what Vietnam was like and everything that was happening around of her kindled this behavior inside of her. Mary Anne never shared or portrayed this behavior, she had inside of her as even the man she was to marry became shaken by her new behavior. Mary Anne started off as a loving well-groomed woman. Then when she started seeing what was going on and happening in Vietnam she commenced to change. Mary Anne became obsessed with Vietnam and all it had to offer. She did not want to leave this place, and wanted to stay and do everything she could. Mary Anne seems not to have gone mad, but to be in love with Vietnam. When she went to Vietnam