Transformation in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Essay

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

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

In Kyle Longley’s, The Morenci Marines, nine young Morenci boys took the call to duty, not knowing that only three will return from the warzone of Vietnam. These boys, some Native American, Mexican American, and Caucasian, joined the fight in Vietnam despite their social, racial, and economic differences. Although the nine men are from a small mining town in Morenci, Arizona, the Vietnam War consisted of, in the words of Mike Cranford, “a lower middle class war,” fueled by small towns all around the United States (Longley, 246). Many of these men felt the call to battle and the will to fight, which had been engrained in their heritage and gave these men the right to be Americans. Aiding the war effort came from countless small American town

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

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

Upon returning home the soldiers meet a field of new troubles that come with acclimation to society after fighting. Many soldiers come home with skills that are not applicable to their lives and generally a much deeper understanding of what they believe the world consists of. This leads to much disillusion with the world they come back to. In both Ernest Hemingway and Tim O’Brien’s stories, soldiers meet with disillusionment and disconnect from society. The soldiers react in different ways to this feeling; the authors use diction, sentence structure, and figurative language to demonstrate their troubles with acclimation.

In Kyle Longley’s, The Morenci Marines, nine young Morenci boys took the call to duty, not knowing that only three will return from the warzone of Vietnam. These boys, some of who were Native American, Mexican American, and Caucasian, joined the fight in Vietnam despite their social, racial, and economic differences. Although the nine men are from a small mining town in Morenci, Arizona, the Vietnam War was, in the words of Mike Cranford, “a lower middle class war,” that was fueled by small towns all around the United States (Longley, 246). Many of these men felt the call to battle and the will to fight, which was engrained in their heritage and gave these men the right to be Americans. Small town America, mostly lower class, was looked upon to aid the war effort with countless men, where as the rest of the nation, the upper to middle class college educated students, were protesting the war and they believed that it was unjust.

The way that Mary Anne portrays herself as she comes to see her boyfriend Mark Fossie and the rest of the crew is on page 89 when “ The way Rat told it, she came in by helicopter along with

Ludacris does a remarkable job of portraying his message about the struggles that some adolescents are faced with. “Runaway Love”, by Ludacris, featuring Mary J. Blige (2007), represents the theme of struggle through hip-hop and rap music. It is about little girls who are “stuck up in the world on their own.” They have to take care of themselves because the people they are around do not care about them. They range from nine to eleven years in age, and their goal in life, at such a young age, is to run away from home. Ludacris is trying to get the listener to realize the struggles that even children have to face because adults are not the only ones who have problems, like most people believe. He is very successful in

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.

Mary Anne's curiosity provoked her change. You see this from the way she is described. If it wasn't for her avid nature to learn more about her surroundings she may have stayed the same. She wanted to know everything about Vietnam, she didn't just want to sit back and watch. She wanted to be in the action. "Though she was young, Rat said Mary Anne Bell was no timid child. She was curious about things…asking questions…. listen quietly while someone would fill her in. She had a good quick mind."(95) She was enthralled by her surroundings she wanted to do and know everything, she was in a new place ready and willing to learn unlike the soldiers who were there only because they had too. The speaker shows us this in this quote. "They carried the soldiers greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing…it was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive…they kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative to fall."(21) This quote is to inform the reader that the only reason a solider would go to war and to stay there is from the "fear of blushing" That they weren't there by choice. The term "humping" is used. It is there way of dealing with the war. They just have to keep on ‘humping" and everything would be all right. It was there way

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in

Mary-Anne was a completely different story all together. "The way Rat told it, she came in by helicopter along with the daily resupply shipment out of Chi Lai. A tall big-boned blonde." She came from the sky like it was no big deal, to see her boyfriend Fossie. A girl coming into a war among the rations and medicine. She was barely a woman, only 17, and when she came to join them at the medical camp she was described as, "had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very friendly too." It was the "very friendly" part that should have been the problem. It was a

The Greenies report that "a couple of times they almost saw her sliding through the shadows," but she would never return from the jungle (O'Brien 125). "She was part of the land" (125). Like Kurtz, Mary Anne crosses the line by losing her self-control to a primordial madness because of the forces of the Vietnam environment.