Surroundings In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

At this point, Anne found herself searching for answers. Not only about racial tensions but about her developing body. She was entering a new phase in her life, where

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

Anne matures throughout the course of her diary entries, moving from detailed accounts of basic activities to deeper, more profound thoughts about humanity and her own personal nature. “I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.” This shows that Anne matures through the course of her diary, she considers herself as a woman rather than a young girl and sets goals for herself that she wants to achieve. Anne becomes more optimistic even after she feels misunderstood by everyone and feels completely alone.

He was proud, yes, but also amazed. A different person, it seemed, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.” She stopped wearing makeup and jewelry. She cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark bandana. She was beginning to look like a man. She learned how to shoot a gun. Mary Anne began talking her and Mark’s future. Instead of getting married like they had planned, she wants to just live together for a while to see what it’s like. Everything about her was changing. She was no longer bubbly, she rarely laughed, and she was going off on her own more and more. One night she never came home. She had spent all night with the green berets on ambush. When Mary returned, she was hardly recognizable. Mark was fed up, he made her wash her hair and clean up. Things seemed to be all right. But there was a great deal of tension between them. Finally, Mark started talking about sending her back home. Mary Anne was gone the next morning along with the 6 other green berets. When she returned, her appearance had completely changed. “It was then, Rat said, that he picked out Mary Anne’s face. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark-not blue, though, but a bright glowing jungle green. She did not pause at Fossie’s bunker. She cradled her weapon and moved swiftly to the Special Forces hooch and followed the others inside.” When Mark entered the green berets hooch, he first thought he saw the same old sweet Mary Anne. She was wearing a pink sweater and a skirt. But there was no

When she enters the bedroom, her voice changes from present to past tense and she starts to reminisce and begins to talk about her mother and aunts. She seems happy to remember her mother’s room and introduces her aunts to the audiences. Mary delivers her dialogue saying that the dressing table and the small elephant statue figures are all same. When Mary gently touches her mother’s photo, she delivers a sad tone. Her performance conveys to the audiences that she misses her mother. The tone of her voice represents that she is a gentle, innocent and a loving child. Her verbal and non-verbal interactions conveyed the viewers with a message that she is an orphan.

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

It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent “sweetheart” to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions because although Mary Anne felt at peace with her transformation, she was also disconnected from reality.

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

The Author came out with a strong out look on the situation of Anne Franks Development. Anne Frank was a little girl who lived in Amsterdam with her Father, they lived a normal life until the Holocaust took place and for forced Anne into hiding. Sadly the Nazis found out about the Franks hiding and who they were staying with, Otto Frank was they only one who survived. Anne Frank knew that she would even be living a sad and scary life. "Anne’s Voice. I expect I should be describing what it feels like to go into hiding. But I really don’t know yet myself. I only know it’s funny never to be able to go outdoors . .

As the stories of the two continue and the experience of the war grows larger, Chris and Mary underwent drastic changes, some obvious, some complex. For Mary the transformation was drastic and less clear then Chris's. Slowly being lost by the Vietnam calture, language and land. Everyone noticed the changes of Mary and how she wasn't the “sweet bubbly young girl” that got off the chopper, she was slowly becoming “a different person.” She cute her hair, cared less about hygiene and stopped wearing jewellery.

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 a young sweet innocent girl unaffected by the war at first. The speaker

     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.

In Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Tim O'Brien gives a dynamic example of how even the deep roots of ones culture can be modified. The focus is on the young lady, whose boyfriend manages to have her shipped over to Vietnam from the U.S. She is then thrown into a completely foreign culture that thousands of American GI's were experiencing. This change in culture affected the strongest and most skilled of America's ground troops. The affects on a civilian are almost unfathomable.

In the story, Mary was an immigrant from India who with the help of the “Courter” tried to assimilate to the England way. Throughout the story there is a constant wave of doubt and frustration between her and her family as they try to learn what it means to live in England. When a person is born they are born with some sort of identity. This may be their ethnicity, their family’s history, or their personality. When that person leaves the homeland that is fundamentally a part of them, they in s sense lose a part of themselves. Mary on the other hand seems to have the opposite problem. Her past is so ingrained that she cannot or does not what to let any of it go. Moving to England was her first time