The Portrayal Of Gender In Sweetheart By Mark Fossie

Mary Anne Bell, Mark Fossie’s girlfriend, arrives in Vietnam in her pink sweater and culottes, suitcase and cosmetic bag on hand, epitomizing the perfect American girl and the perfect girlfriend to an American soldier. Willing to drop her life in the suburbs of Cleveland, she takes four flights and a chopper to visit her high school sweetheart. A change occurs in her behavior as her curiosity allows her to spend time becoming more directly drawn into and infatuated with the dynamics of war, losing the previously perceived innocence and becoming an intimidating figure. Elroy Berdahl, the quiet, elderly hotel manager who O’Brien claims “saved” him (48), is portrayed with an emphasis on his silent wisdom. He is completely detached from war, yet

O’Brien implies that his indifference comes with a type of bravery. Elroy and Mary Anne embody two types of masculine ideals, his omniscience and stoicism adjacent to her unapologetic, almost animalistic violence. The characters, as well as their disappearances, work effectively as parallels, emphasizing the ambiguity and fluidity of gender in a war story, a seemingly stereotypically “masculine” environment.
After going out for several nights on ambush with the Green Berets, or “Greenies”, Mary Anne’s change in behavior becomes more apparent when she appears from the jungle wearing a necklace of human tongues, after which she leaves both the camp and Mark Fossie for good.

The “Sweetheart” anecdote is a portrayal of the instability of gender instead of a reinforcement of specific gender stereotyping or misogyny. “Mary Anne wasn't afraid to get her hands bloody. At times, in fact, she seemed fascinated by it…No time for sorting through options, no thinking at all; you just stuck your hands in and started plugging up holes. She was quiet and steady. She didn't back off from the ugly cases.”(98) In just the span of a few days Mary Anne goes from Mark Fossie’s pretty, feminine, devoted girlfriend and perfect future wife, to a woman literally hands-deep in the products of violence. In many ways, she becomes a representation of an ideal soldier, falling comfortably into confidence and uniformity fairly quickly and challenging her boyfriend’s masculinity, then taking a liking, however extreme, to violence and

brutality.
O’Brien stops at the Tip Top Lodge during his internal crisis in which he seriously considers evading his draft notice and fleeing to Canada, and ends up staying for six days with Elroy Berdahl.

Elroy generously offers O’Brien money and shelter and, without ever betraying his feelings regarding the situation, helps him to make a decision by taking him by boat toward Canadian waters. The qualities Elroy possesses are admired by O’Brien as courageous, to the point that his experience and wisdom makes him something larger than humanity, a man above men, meant to be revered. “He didn’t speak…And yet by his presence, his mute watchfulness, he made it real…He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them.”(60) Elroy is watchful, and though quiet, he is not passive and O’Brien hints about his extreme intensity. Seemingly indifferent, O’Brien holds him in the highest regard as his savior, and as someone who just “knew”, without having to be told. Elroy teaches him how to live among books and newspapers, and about splitting firewood. His masculinity is tinged with domesticity, experience and patience, which distance him from fighting and from war, completely opposite of Mary Anne’s descent into masculine

savagery.
Ultimately, Elroy exits in a deliberate and calculated manner, but it is a disappearance nonetheless. Mary Anne’s departure, significantly more dramatized, most likely due to the story’s retelling by Rat Kiley, it is not unlike Elroy’s. Their mysterious exits underscore the imprecision and contradictory nature of masculinity. “I don’t remember saying goodbye…I went inside and waited for a while, but I felt a bone certainty that he wouldn't be back. In a way, I thought, it was appropriate…” (60). Mary Anne’s disappearance is different from Elroy’s in her development and change, contrasted with his steady, constant display of stoicism. Mary Anne is introduced as one character, and then goes on to practice extreme military masculinity, concluding with her becoming a frighteningly distorted version of a perfect soldier.
Elroy Berdahl and Mary Anne Bell are two different products of a number of qualities that masculinity is composed of. He represents the experienced, wise individual and she represents near cruelty and ferocity. While having an exterior of two seemingly opposite people, what they share is a core of masculinity. Consequently, the circumstances of their unannounced exits can only bring more attention to what can only be described as masculinity’s obscure nature, and the way that its elements oppose one another. Still, while the reader may see Mary Ann and Elroy’s characters as having different, yet equally advantageous qualities when observed objectively, it is indicated that Elroy’s are more pleasing and admired. Still, however gentle and esteemed the depiction of masculinity, their disappearances are their common ground. His masculinity is not in any way a more tangible masculinity than Mary Ann’s. What the author produces by showing the reader one moment in the lives of these two characters is the idea that masculinity is illusory, no matter the kind or form that it takes on. The abrupt conclusions of Mary Ann and of Elroy are as irresolute and indistinct as any concrete designations of qualities within gender.