The Things They Carried Loss Of Innocence Quotes

Laurence Stern wrote, “ No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” By interpreting this quote, Stern says that no one can understand what it feels like for a man to have his mind torn apart by two equivalent forces that pull him apart in opposite directions inside. There was much underlying meaning and connection from Laurence Stern’s quote and to The Things They Carried. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien is the author as well as the character who is pulled apart by two projects: war and morals. The war in Vietnam heavily impacts each soldier causing them to yearn for

Through the writing the reader has a clear picture of the war and through every retelling, no matter how fabricated it is, O’Brien wraps the reader in feeling, feeling as if every aspect is true. In the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” we are introduced to Mary Anne Bell, the gutsy and curious girlfriend of Mark Fossie. The story is told by Rat Kiley who has a knack for exaggeration. Even still, as O’brien relays the story of the once cute, young girl losing her innocence and her mind in the jungle the reader can’t help but feel as if the story is the happening-truth. The effect Mary Anne has on the reader is too strong to be swept aside as fake.

In the short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien, the author shows that no matter what the circumstances were, the people that were exposed to the Vietnam War were affected greatly. A very young girl named Mary Anne Bell was brought by a boyfriend to the war in Vietnam. When she arrived she was a bubbly young girl, and after a few weeks, she was transformed into a hard, mean killer.

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.

It is a reoccurring theme in many of the chapters. In the chapter “Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong”, Mark Fossie’s girlfriend Mary Anne Bell is brought over from the United States to Vietnam. Mary Anne represents innocence itself when she arrives in “white culottes and this sexy pink sweater” (O’Brien 86). The author uses the culottes to convey how fragile and out of place the girl is in Vietnam. This item of clothing is not something one would normally wear into a warzone. This shows the immaturity and youth of the young women; she arrives without almost any knowledge of the war and is seen as young and dumb by the men. This begins to change throughout the rest of the chapter. After a few days, Mary Anne begins to seem at home and become comfortable in a hostile environment (O’Brien 92). Vietnam is quickly and steadily changing the way she thinks and acts. When she becomes comfortable, she is slowly losing her innocence compared to when she first arrived.” She quickly fell into the habits of the bush” (O’Brien 94). She started to not brush her teeth or care about her appearance. She is now becoming “taken over” by the bush and shows the steady decline of innocence in her personality. She continues down this path of no return when she starts hanging out with the greenies (O’Brien 97). The greenies are seen as “outsiders” to the rest of the soldiers. By showing that Mary Anne is being seen hanging out with the Greenies, it shows that her innocence is completely gone now; there is nothing more than anyone can do to help her. Rat Kiley tries to tell Mark Fossie that, “man, you must be deaf. She’s already gone” (O’Brien 107). This metaphor for the loss of innocence is portrayed through a young girl, but applies to every solider in the company. Rat said,” (it) was what happened to all of them. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterward it’s never the same (O’Brien 109). It is believed that

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

In both The Things They Carried and Apocalypse Now, transitional archetypical roles are used to show the degradation of innocence, as a result of the conflicts of war. In The Things They Carried, Mary Anne Bell, the young girlfriend of solider Mark Fossie, is brought to Vietnam in the heart of the war to be with him. In the beginning of her visit, Mary Anne is extremely soft, kind, and ignorant to the nature of the conflict taking place around her (O’Brien 91). Her relationship with Mark is one that appears as overly romanticized: “Mary Anne Bell and Mark Fossie had been sweethearts since grammar school. […] [someday] they would be married, and live in a fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie, and have three healthy yellow -haired children.

The Things They Carried is a war story based on the Vietnam War. One story the author, Tim O 'Brien tells is the story of Mary Anne, Mark Fossie’s childhood sweetheart. Mary Anne’s curiosity allows her to acquire knowledge about Vietnam’s culture and language. She wants to learn about Vietnam, the war and what they do. She also isn’t afraid and is eager to aid the casualties. One night she goes out on an ambition with the Green Berets, and the next day she and Fossie become engaged. Eventually she disappears for 3 weeks only to arrive at the special forces hut, and when seen Mary Anne is wearing the same outfit as before, but with a necklace of human tongues around her neck. She says what happened isn’t bad. In the end, she crossed to the other side never coming back, becoming one with the land. Mary Anne symbolizes war soldiers going through the war getting consumed by the darkness of the war.

One main theme of this book is how war can change people and this shows how it changed just an ordinary girl who ended up getting "dirty".

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.

Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it.

“Tim O’Brien is obsessed with telling a true war story. O 'Brien 's fiction about the Vietnam experience suggest, lies not in realistic depictions or definitive accounts. As O’Brien argues, absolute occurrence is irrelevant because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Mary Ann’s induction into genuine experience is clearly destructive as well as empowering” (p.12) Tim O’s text, The Things they Carried, details his uses of word choice to portray his tone and bias. Tim O’Brien uses Martha to represents the idea of home and all it attendant images. He also uses letters and quotes to convey his image. Despite the fact that women assume a little part in The Things They Carried, it is a critical one. The Female characters Martha, Mary Anne Bell, and Kathleen Cross all affect the lives of the soldiers . Tim O’Brien uses the female role to portray his view and thoughts on his true war story which depict the lack of morality.

What would you learn, push-yourself to be, or talk to someone about when you come to face the instance of war? This is one of the many questions main character, Tim O’Brien, thought about before he faced one of his biggest fears. From reading this book, Tim O’Brien learned a lot about himself through interactions with other characters, which helped the readers understand an overall theme. Over the course of the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien becomes a stronger man, learns life lessons from his close interactions, and teaches readers the importance of love and friendship. At the beginning, Tim’s main goal is to convince himself to man-up for the war that soon would change his life.

Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried tells a story of how war can change a person. It shows the struggle to overcome sadness (about death) and the struggle to deal with death; it shows the human side of war. This story gives strong feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc. and allows the reader to deeply understand the character. Tim O'Brien allows the audience to feel this feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc. better by writing this book as fiction. (in a true way) O'Brien's choice to write his novel as fiction does leave the reader asking a lot of questions, but this (type of writing or art) allows him to more (in a way that's close to the truth or true number) bring across the feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc.

The moral of the story is how war changes people. Mary Anne came to the war with a long, nice, friendly and innocence mind. Later in the story after she learned how to fight a war, she cut her hair short, stop wearing jewelry and start to become more determine to fight like a soldier She changed from a naive innocent girl to a hardened soldier shedding all her former normal life.Its shows how war actually change personality. Mary Anne can no longer separate herself from Vietnam, from the wilderness and the killing. Mary Anne, the innocent persons they were would never be seen again. This moral is similar to Rat Kiley shooting a water buffalo because his personality also changed when his friend Curt Lemon was Killed. This tells us how war