The Endorphins Start Of The Song Tra Bong

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 chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” Rat tells the story of a time when Mark Fossie, a soldier brought his girlfriend to Vietnam. She was a sweet gentle women who paid attention and learned fast. She gets along with everyone pretty well including the Green Berets. Mary Anne’s personality was changing, not just in front of the soldiers but also in front of Fossie,. According to the “Greenies” Mary was fearless, she would go and do stuff that even the greenies were afraid of. During ambushes, Mary would go off on her own and not come back for hours or days. One day she walked off by herself and never came back, from time to time the greenies would see her in the shadows, wearing her pink sweater and human tongue necklace.

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

In the chapter, “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, we meet an interesting character named Mary Anne. She was a seventeen year old lady who just got out of high school and went to visit her boyfriend Mark Fossie in Vietnam. It started out as just visiting a childhood sweetheart, except it all changed in a matter of weeks. Mary Anne began to take too much interest and she became engulfed in vietnam. She wasn’t all too careful, rather than her swallowing the land, she was swallowed whole by it. Vietnam changed Mary Anne into something she never thought that she would become, she changed into a lone soldier, physically, behaviorally and psychologically.

Tim O’Brien had uses many figurative language like imagery, “And yet at close range their faces showed the tension.” This shows that even when Mark Fossie and Mary Anne were at good standings, you could tell that something was off. (Pg. 99). Imag7 n nery being the most popular form of figurative language by O’Brien is used again when Mary

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

When Curley’s wife enters the bunkhouse in chapter two she is described as having “full roughed lips, wide spaced eyes, heavily made up and haired with curls like sausages” this makes her appearance to be quite sexualised as she is described as wearing red lipstick and nail varnish and red is a promiscuous colour.

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

Serotonine is a neurotransmitter known for its ability to cause powerful contractions of smooth muscles, therefore a key element in the regulation of blood pressure. Ecstasy causes the release of the neurotransmitters which leads to a fifty- eighty percent reduction in the serotonine. The reduction in serotonine stems into the brain and heart. In the brain the depletion of serotonine is noticed in the striatal area. The straital area is the area responsible for coordination, learning, and memorization (“After the Rave: the Ecstasy Hangover”). The heart is damaged by the loss of serotonine because there is nothing to regulate the pressure of the blood flow. Blood pressure rises to dangerous levels before causing the body to go into distress before dying.

One explains, “...a couple of times they saw her sliding through the shadows. Not quite, but almost. She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill”(110). The contradiction of Mary Anne’s naive, suburban American clothes mixed with her trophy of tongues brings a strange light to her as a person and a character. The mix shows that she held on to her roots, and yet, embraced her newfound self. The phrase “ready for the kill” was used, implying that she even had the aura of danger, same as before. She radiated sinister energy and natural mystery in between the trees. Mary Anne became “part of the land” with her embracement of her darker, more primal side, something most of the men could not and would not

The drugs that create a neurologic effect and disrupts the entire nervous system due to overuse. We always take a dark side of opioids when the term is used. It is a prescription drug in medical world which exercises neural cells and creates a molecular and biochemical response in the body. It might not be good nor be worse, It is just a drug used in society to cure Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other neurological disorder. These chemical molecules, opioids, have receptors in their body and they get attached to cells to create a response. Endorphins are released in the body to control pain. The ideology relates to neurological aspects of human.

In Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Tim O'brien writes “[Mary Anne] had crossed to the other side.

She spends most of the first scene talking down to Stella, mentioning that she looks as if she 's put on weight while praising herself for remaining the same size since they last saw each other. She dresses in rhinestone crowns, "fluffy bodices" and pearl necklaces and earrings. Her wardrobe appears to be filled with clothing that 's either white or and pastels, colors that one easily associates with purity.

First, Twyla introduces Mary from the beginning of the story, as her mother claiming that she was put in St. Bonny’s, because mother have been all night dancing. Twyla reveals that she