Sweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong Essay

the world are free from conflict (Independent Digital News and Media, 2016). In “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” by Tim O’Brien the impact of war is displayed through the life alternating changes in a young woman named Mary Anne. Over the course of the story Mary Anne goes from innocent, enthusiastic, kind individual to a compulsive, aggressive, and apathetic one. A central theme of “The Song of the Tra Bong” is the powerful physical and mental altering effects of war. My story further demonstrates

One story from The Things They Carried that this quote is particularly evident in is, the “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” story. War is described by Tim O’Brien as “ mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love”, and most if not all of these emotions are evident in this story. The story of Mary Anne is full of mystery as see is transformed by the land and becomes less and less the girl she was when she arrived. Furthermore, terror

Imagine what would happen if a soldier invited someone to a war zone to be with them. One of the most notable chapters in Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried is “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” which is about a soldier bringing his girlfriend to Vietnam. In this chapter, the story is told by Rat Kiley who has a “reputation for exaggeration and overstatement.” The story starts out with a few soldiers jokingly throwing around the idea of getting girls into their camp. However, after thinking

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.      Mark Fossie decided he was going to sneak his girlfriend onto

"story-truth," can, and O'Brien uses it liberally. Tim kills a guy on a trail and feels guilty about it, so he makes up a back-story for the kid in order to make the victim more human. Rat Kiley tells us the creepiest story in the world, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," in which a good down-home American girl is seduced by the Vietnam War into becoming a creepy jungle killer. Later, Kiowa drowns in a field that's literally full of poop, and we start to talk about blame. Then, in "Good Form," O'Brien

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong In this chapter Mark Fossie brings his girlfriend Mary Anne to the military compound where they are at. Mary Anne later becomes a different person than she was before and goes missing when she goes up to the mountains. On pg.87 O’Brien uses Rat’s description of the land where the military compound he was at. “... was situated at the top of a flat-crested hill along the Northern outskirts of the Tra Bong.” O’brien uses Imagery to describe the place so people can picture

Different soldiers tell the story of what happened during the war, but sometimes, we don’t know if it is true. For example, in the chapter of, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” one of the soldiers, Mark Fossie, flies over his girlfriend, Mary Anne, to their camp site. He expected her to stay with him for the rest of her vacation there, but then her curiosity of Vietnam got to her. Mary Anne was curious of what

Mary Ann can be seen transforming in the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”. The transformations in the chapter take place at different times as the story progresses. The Mary Ann that is presented at the beginning of the chapter is a great contrast to the Mary Ann that we end the chapter with. The different transformations of Mary Ann that take place are physical, behavioral, and psychological. These different types of transformations can symbolize many different things, some of which will

are those that are between the absolutely unbelievable and the mundane. “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” is a tale about loss of innocence. Mary Anne Bell, arrives at Vietnam who soon feels drawn to the culture and the thrill of war. The character Rat Kiley tells a story of his first assignment in the mountains of Chu Lai, in a isolated area where he ran an aid station with several men near a river called the Song Tra Bong. One day, Eddie Diamond, the highest ranking man in his company, jokingly

On page 92 in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley uses the simile “...like a cheerleader visiting the opposing team's locker room,” to describe the sight of Mary Anne visiting the village of Tra Bong. Mary Anne is compared to a cheerleader because she is a young cute girl all dolled up in nice clothes while visiting a poor village with “thatched roofs” and “naked children.” This simile is to compare the odd sight of a well dressed girl in this run down village in Vietnam, to illustrate how

Sweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong as Metaphor   The Vietnam War is a strange and unexplainable event in American history. The controversies surrounding the American involvement in Vietnam and the need for Vietnam veterans to tell their stories of the war are prevalent in the post-Vietnam culture of America. "The stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane"(89). The story of the sweetheart of the Song

Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury

Reading Assignments Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Rat Kiley had told a story of a girl that was shipped to Vietnam and had stayed with them at the camp. Mary Anne Bell had begun as a normal innocent girl that slowly delved into herself and became one with the land disappearing into the forest. 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

Transformation in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong 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

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. O’Brien uses imagery to enhance the story. Several examples of imagery are found in the chapter. One example is “To the north and west the country rose up in thick walls of wilderness, triple-canopied jungle, mountains unfolding into higher mountain…” (87). This quote gives the reader a vivid image

What role does superstition and religion play in war? Explain using evidence from the text. Superstition and religion serve as emotional anchors for the soldiers, allowing them to have something to hold onto and to preserve their sanity in the midst of the violence and chaos that is all around them. An example of such a use for superstition and religion lies in Henry Dobbins and his girlfriend’s pantyhose. Dobbins uses the pantyhose as his “good-luck charm,” which gives him “access to a spiritual

In the short story, “Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong”, Tim O’ Brien uses different figurative language to give the story a more realistic feel. The use of the Figurative language makes the story much more interesting and gives more detail to each and every character’s current circumstances. The Figurative language evokes a happiness and gloominess in the story. Figurative helps the stories conflicts seem much more detailed and explained. Here are some examples of figurative language used in the story

Imagery, detail, and symbolism play a crucial role in this work. Imagery has the function of painting a picture of the situation in the reader’s mind so that he or she is able to develop a version of the story individually. It makes the reading a more personalized experience that helps the reader to understand what’s going on. When O’Brien was just about to escape to Canada to avoid being drafted, he described the scene that was presented in front of him. “The shoreline was dense with brush and timber

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.

Things They Carried Essay 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