Song Tra Bong Women

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

Also she learned how to “disassemble an M-16” spending lots of time “plunking away C-ration cans with an M-16” this new skill would become a factor for life or death for her (O’Brien 93). With the many weeks she stayed the men would notice that her body “ seemed foreign some how -to stiff in places , too firm where softness used to be.” this was also displayed with her eyes that were “utterly flat and no indifferent… no emotion in her stare.” (O’Brien 105). This change show how Vietnam changed her entire identity as well as the soldiers who fought the Viet

However, female soldiers also have many tough things to do and face the risk of death. Although they join a war as nurses, they need to fight against an

Mary Anne is first presented as a “seventeen-year-old doll in her goddamn culottes, perky and fresh-faced”, which brings about an image of the innocence and an American Dream-esque teenage girl (92). By presenting her as such, O’Brien illustrates the naiveté of someone who is being introduced to war, yet has no experience. She shows up on the first day with no understanding and therefore no knowledge of the severity of war. However, within a page and a half, Mary Anne changes into a girl who could “clip an artery and pump up a plastic sprint…[and who] cut her hair short” (93-94). Like a soldier, Mary Anne did not complain nor shy away from the trauma; she embraced it and fully immersed herself in it. Though she was trying to prove that she was tough and could handle Vietnam, she slowly became more and more invested in the gore and horror of war. After disappearing for days at a time, abandoning her boyfriend, and associating herself with the mysterious “Greenies”, Mary Anne was finally seen “wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues” (110). Although she retained her classic all-American outer appearance, her personality became polar opposite. This is a reality that many soldiers experience, where they turn into shells of their former selves, left with the abyss that war created. While the character of

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.

I don’t know’”(175). Visiting the place where Kiowa died brought back a lot of emotions for O'Brien, with his daughter there it was hard for him to display all those oppressive feelings. With Kathleen pressing him for an explanation on the meaning of this place, it took alot for him not to tell her the story. Considering she is only ten years old, her innocence is still very present and for Tim to daper this adventurous experience with a war story ending with death would halt the fluffy world she is in now. An example of innocence destroyed is with Mary Anne, Mark Fossie had a hard time and ultimately failed keeping Mary Anne innocent. After coming to the camp Mary Anne was described as, “ The war intrigued her. The land too, and the mystery… She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal”(96-98). With curiosity grows a need for guidance, which Fossie did not give her. He did not shield her from the horrors of war and therefore she became the horrors by exploring and connecting with the natives. This is just one example of the results that come from impurities taking over the ones soldiers love at home, it is imperative that when a soldier goes overseas he does not bring the darkness back with him. One more recipient of this medal should be Kiowa. Kiowa helps the others preserve what

The story “The Things They Carried” reveals emotional and physical challenges soldiers face during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien introduces the reader not only to the subject of war and physical exhaustion, but also to human feelings and inner struggle soldiers are going through at this war. Besides the equipment and necessary things, soldiers carried emotions which strengthen their hope of staying alive in order to continue their mission. Tim O’Brien uses female figure, Martha, to create psychological escape which distracts a young soldier, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, from the war. However, such a distraction leads to the death of a group member, Ted Lavender. The illusion of love for Martha and false hopes gradually transform into bitter feeling of guilt and the harsh reality of war. Tim O’Brien masterfully describes Jimmy Cross’ and other soldier’s experience and feelings during

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

Mark Fossie worked in a medical detachment in the mountains west of Chu Lai with Rat Kiley. The mountains was calm most of the times, there was really no action, except when a wounded soldier needs care. So Fossie decided to bring his high school sweetheart to Vietnam, Mary Anne Bell. “At time she gave off a kind of come-and-get me energy, coy and flirtatious” (45). She was a nice outgoing and attractive girl who gets along with everybody.

In the story ‘’The Things They Carried’’, Tim O ‘Brien shows the life of a platoon of young American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Even though they meet many kinds of uncertainties about nervous atmosphere at a war zone or fear of other peers’ laughing, the young soldiers do not often talk with each other and hide their fear and fantasy. Although sometimes Cross and Lavender are seemed to cope with their difficulties, there still exists some uncertainties in their minds. Moreover, Lavender and Cross are still distracted by uncertainties. Cross spend much time determining virginity and truth of love of Martha so he does not care about his fellow soldiers constantly. In term of

“The only certain thing during the Vietnam War was that nothing was certain” the war the soldiers were going into was uncertain, the country was unknown full of jungles and diseases waiting to infect, and most of them felt uncertain that the United States should even be in the war since it was a war of politics to eliminate the worlds influence of communism (Kaplan). Of all the uncertainty, the only thing real to the soldiers was imagination; imagination became reality. “Imagination was a killer,” imagination caused the death of Ted Lavender from his drugs that departs him from reality, the burning of Martha’s uncertain love, and stricken fear into the soldiers (O’ Brien 235). Elizabeth Piedmont-Marton phrases fear as “infinitely heavy with the weighed fear,” and this fear caused a prolonged salvation. They needed to be saved from the god forsaken war and country that was out to kill them with each and every step they took into the jungle. Johnathan Tran believes that stories, “relives the lives of dead people.” O’ Brien goes on to mention a childhood memory of his nine year old friend named Linda who was bullied, and O’ Brien had no confidence to stand up to her bully and her torment right then and there. She died of cancer shortly after. But for O’Brien, she lives on to stay in his memories to be brought back to life in the power of his stories of her (Tran). The power of salvation from stories are derived from forgiveness, and to tell a story of someone that is to employ good feelings and thoughts of them. One of the objects carried by the soldiers that is infinite in abundance is the amount of stories to be told and the amount of power from these

Throughout The Things They Carried, society’s antagonizing treatment towards the soldiers and veterans is symbolized through O’Brien’s characterization of women as selfish, insensitive, and ignorant.

Women, regardless of the opposition, were determined to support their armies and their beliefs even on the battlefield. The North and South armies of the country were fighting without proper organization from their respective governments, leading women to volunteer to help their men in whatever manner they could. Contributing to the war effort, women were “responsible for much of the clothing, feeding, and nursing of the soldiers.”18 Women would cook and do the laundry for the soldiers, working in camps away from the battlefield. Other women would provide comfort for the dying soldiers, nurturing the wounded and staying with the men who were dying until their last moments. Their efforts were to offset the fact that the wounded men were separated from their loved ones and “represented domestic tranquility in the midst of armed conflict.”19 Women were not prohibited from nursing injured soldiers because it was “not yet a profession requiring special training…care of the sick and injured was traditionally a female skill”20. Nursing was not the only important contribution that women provided during the war. They also worked within their communities to make up for the men who had left to fight in the war, managing homes and plantations,

In Women in the Military, Janette Mance explores the debates and problems faced by the increasing number of women involved in the military. After examining issues such as pregnancy, sexual harassment, and rape, Mance concludes that as a society we must continue to strive for gender equality.

Sam finds that more personal model in the veterans she talks to around Hopewell. In her first encounters with the vets, however, she meets with a puzzling inability (or refusal) to speak – “Anyone who survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal and embarrassing” (p. 67). Even if the vets do talk about the war, their stories rarely mesh. Some want to ignore the past – some want to glorify it. Some tell her to stop looking for something she can never fully understand. Because their voices conflict, Sam feels that they can’t be held as reliable sources of the truth that she desires.