Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

In this story, Margaret is angry with the fact that Viola Cullinan calls her by ‘Mary’ just for her convenience because Margaret is too long.

Mary Anne was the girlfriend of a soldier stationed with Kiley and one night he got the bright idea to bring his girlfriend to the base. When Mary Anne arrived she was sweet and innocent and had no idea what she had just gotten herself into, just like most of the soldiers. By the end of the story, Mary Anne had become a completely different person, she had adopted the bush way of life, started going on late night ambushes with the Green Berets, and acquired a necklace of human tongues. (pages 85-110) The men were all once innocent and quiet, but through the many months in the bush, they began to change. They became more vulgar, extraverted, and confrontational. They feared for their lives and always felt like they had to watch their

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.

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.

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.

Mary begins the story as a doting housewife going through her daily routine with her husband. She is content to sit in his company silently until he begins a conversation. Everything is going as usual until he goes “ slowly to get himself another drink” while telling Mary to “sit down” (Dahl 1). This shocks Mary as she is used to getting things for him. After downing his second drink, her husband coldly informs her that he is leaving her and the child. This brutal news prompts the first change in Mary, from loving wife to emotionless and detached from everything.

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 Ann, the cute blond with the cosmetic bag and pink sexy sweater portrays the perfect picture of a high school sweetheart of the seventies. She is being imported "with the daily resupply shipment" and presented as an object of the men's enjoyment. "The men genuinely liked her" means they liked what they saw, her body. But this image of Mary

In Marked Women, Unmarked Men, Deborah Tannen discusses the nature of marked women and its consequences. Tannen, a female writer, points out the “marked” aspects of women by first giving an example of three differently clothed women, named No. 1 through 3, in a meeting. She allows readers to visualize the distinct difference between men and women’s appearance. Then she shifts to explaining in depth about the definition of “marked” and how it appears on the daily lives of women. She spends most of her article discussing the conference meeting example and the definition of “marked”. Although Tannen indicates many contradictions surrounding the “marked” female aspects like clothing and surnames, she does not reach to a conclusion. Because the

(Bowen, 2000.) Although not much insight is given into the awful relationship Mary had with her late husband, there’s is evident that she resents her daughter. Precious became the target of neglect and abuse due to the fact that, her father raped her and her mother instead of protecting her became jealous of her own daughter. Mary intentionally tries to impair her daughter Precious by constantly demoralizing her by telling her that she is ugly, fat and stupid. Mary is fixed on the idea of hurting her physically, emotionally and psychologically. Mary is a constant remind to Precious of how she will be nothing without her. As a result, she internalizes this tension and many aspects of her life suffers. Precious is performing poorly at school, her physical health is bad as she is overly obese and she is a loner in the sense that she makes no effort to befriend anyone. She is constantly worried about what her mother is going to do to her for the day or she is constantly on edge with her mother, not knowing what to

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, men and women hold very different roles. Not only are women the weaker sex, but their worth is dependant on how powerful and high up their husband is. Because of this, women are forced to be silent and are not allowed an opinion. If a woman shows traits that are considered manly, such as intelligence, determination, or control, she is considered masculine, and therefore unattractive. From a very young age, the main character, Janie, is taught that in order to find a suitable husband, she needs to suppress her independent personality. As a result of this belief being engraved into her, Janie does not realize her worth, therefore she is involved three abusive relationships. For years, girls were taught to make themselves smaller so they do not threaten the male’s reputation. The reader sees that Janie is an example the mistreatment of females through Janie’s three marriages.

Being a women during the 50’s Mary Ann was expected to be proper, innocent and unable to understand or handle the extreme emotions and pressures of war, however, she quickly adapted to the war and went against everything expected of her and joined the green berets. O'Brien pushed the irony of Mary Ann’s story even further than just defying gender norms as he juxtaposes innocence and the savagery of war together through Mary Ann's actions and appearance at the end of the chapter. The men all talk about how Mary Ann is still out in the woods fighting, they say; “she was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues” (110). Although it is extremely unlikely that this experience ever happened, O'Brien uses this story to show just how life changing war can be, he proves that even the most innocent person can walk into the war and come out a savage, hostile and war oriented person. Had he never juxtaposed the innocence of Mary Ann and her ‘girly’ clothing against the demented and horrifying necklace of severed tongues, his point may have never had the deep message he wanted to portray. There are many other examples of irony spread throughout the novel, however this example had one of the most powerful message and proof of how

By the novel, Mary discusses several issues related to relationships which terrorize aspects of her personal life, including birth and childhood, the death of her mother, her miscarriage and new child and her coming across with the events which occurred in the summer of 1816 (see notes).

The song "The message" by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five depicts the struggle of young black adults growing up in society. The struggle to make it out of poverty can be compared to survival of the fittest in a jungle. Only the strong would survive and adapt to the changes to fit in. Trying their best to make a betterment with whatever little society offers. Being a young black African American in the early 1980's was not easy. It was easier to live the fast life and gain fast money by being part of the drug community. Drugs, guns, and money was glamorized and this is what the young adults looked at as a means of getting rich. In the songs, a young man talks about how he is trying hard to hold on to the little bit of sanity he has left in his soul. He talks about the struggle he endures while trying not to get pushed over the edge. He was born an innocent child who's blind to the ways of mind kind. Growing up he faced many challenges and had to fight