“And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back” (110). Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” presents an all-American girl who has been held back by social and behavioral norms – grasping for an identity she has been deprived the ability to develop. The water of the Song Tra Bong removes Mary Anne’s former notion of being as she, “stopped for a swim” (92). With her roles being erased Mary Anne becomes obsessed with the land and mystery of Vietnam and is allowed to discover herself. Through the lenses of Mark Fossie and the men in the Alpha Company, Mary Anne becomes an animal and is completely unrecognizable by the end of the story. Mary Anne, however, states she is happy and self-aware. The men of the Alpha Company argue for virtue in that Mary Anne was “gone” (107) and that what she was becoming “was dangerous… ready for the kill” (112). They did not want to accept a woman becoming something different from what women always were. In “How Tell to a True War Story” we are told that a true war story “does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior” (65). Mary Anne did not truly become ‘dark’, because to her this is not a story about war; this is a story about a woman attempting to overcome gender roles and the inability of men to accept it. When Mary Anne begins interacting with the land and the material culture of war we are introduced to her curious nature. She would “listen carefully” (91) and was intrigued by the land and its mystery. Vietnam was like Elroy Berdahl to her in the beginning in that it did not speak, it did not judge, it was simply there. Vietnam saved Mary Anne’s life. Like Elroy, “[Vietnam] was the t... ... middle of paper ... ...eauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery… the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity” (78). According to story truth Mary Anne gave into darkness and became cold, but story truth does not matter. The absolute truth is much more dark and sad than that. Mary Anne struggled to define herself in a place that gave her the opportunity. Fossie’s stubbornness and inability to accept Mary Anne’s journey, however, led to her being consumed by ambiguous darkness. Is the final truth for Mary Anne similar to Curt Lemon’s? If “[a] thing [can] happen and be a total lie; [and] another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (80), then maybe the final truth for Mary Anne was that she really did “know exactly who [she was]” (106). The ending of Mary Anne’s story could have been beautiful and civil to her, but ugly and chaotic to you, and that was her liberation.
Tim O’Brien begins his journey as a young “politically naive” man and has recently graduated out of Macalester College in the United States of America. O’Brien’s plan for the future is steady, but this quickly changes as a call to an adventure ruins his expected path in life. In June of 1968, he receives a draft notice, sharing details about his eventual service in the Vietnam War. He is not against war, but this certain war seemed immoral and insignificant to Tim O’Brien. The “very facts were shrouded in uncertainty”, which indicates that the basis of the war isn’t well known and perceived
Appy’s book is valuable to its readers in showing how Vietnam became the template for every American war since, from novelties like the invasion of Grenada to the seemingly never-ending conflicts post-9/11. But before all that, there was Vietnam, and, larger lessons aside, Appy’s book is a fascinating, insightful, infuriating and thought-provoking study of that conflict, from its earliest days
In his short story, O’Brien unravels step by step the irony in the double meaning of truth, implied in this first statement, “This is true”, to the reader which is then woven through the entire story. By trying to characterize what constitutes a true war story, but never really achieving this goal, the true irony of his short story is revealed. Even though in some instances giving away his opinion explicitly, the sheer contradiction of honesty and reality becomes even more visible in an implicit way by following O’Brien’s explanations throughout the story while he deconstructs his first statement. The incongruity between his first statement and what is actually shown in his examples does not need any explicit statements to drive home his message.
In this chapter, O’Brien contrasts the lost innocence of a young Vietnamese girl who dances in grief for her slaughtered family with that of scarred, traumatized soldiers, using unique rhetorical devices
Raymond, Michael W. "Imagined Responses to Vietnam: Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. Critique 24 (Winter 1983).
Kiley is telling the story to illustrate how all GI's changed in their Vietnam experience. The fact that the main character is a woman drives his point even farther home. She is the very portrait of mainstream, wholesome America; the only thing she lacks is an apple pie. Kiley describes her as "This cute blonde - just a kid, just barely out of high school - she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags." (O'Brien 90) This girl is the antithesis of what one would expect to find in Vietnam. She is pure and innocent. Throughout her time in Vietnam she changes from this image to something very different, she spends less time with her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. Mary Anne hangs around with the Green Berets, who are very different from the other soldiers. Eventually she becomes one of them, marking a total transformation, "There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable." (O'Brien 110) Vietnam changed Mary Anne; it forced her to become something as foreign to America as the war itself.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
Fighting the Vietnam War dramatically changed the lives of everyone even remotely involved, especially the brave individuals actually fighting amidst the terror. One of the first things concerned when reading these war stories was the detail given in each case. Quotes and other specific pieces of information are given in each occurrence yet these stories were collected in 1981, over ten years following the brutal war. This definitely shows the magnitude of the war’s impact on these servicemen. These men, along with every other individual involved, went through a dramatic experience that will forever haunt their lives. Their minds are filled with scenes of exploding buildings, rape, cold-blooded killing, and bodies that resemble Swiss cheese.
Of all the literary lenses, one would not think that feminism would be a prevalent topic in a war novel. In Tim O’Brien’s iconic book, The Things They Carried, the idea that women were just as important as men acts an important theme, however from a different perspective. Movies and epic war stories tell of the heroic actions of the World’s finest: bulky men with an appetite for battle. Yet, there always lied a backbone. Comfort, inspiration, ease, all things that women provided to soldiers during any war. Yet, sometimes things did not go as planned and rash actions were made. O’Brien’s masterful use of lenses creates an interesting novel, one that will stand the test of time, however, the aspects of the feminist lens provides much insight into the inner lying meanings of the book, mostly in the areas of characters, objects of importance, and the role of gender in the Vietnam War.
Some authors choose to write stories and novels specifically to evoke certain emotions from their readers as opposed to writing it for just a visual presentation. In order to do this, they occasionally stretch the truth and “distort” the event that actually occurred. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a compilation of short stories about the Vietnam War with distortion being a key element in each of them.
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.
Mary Anne is initially introduced to the audience, narrated by Rat Kiley, as an innocent and naïve young woman present in Vietnam solely to visit her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. She arrives in “white culottes” and a “sexy pink sweater” (86), and is deemed by the other soldiers as no more than a happy distraction for her man. As Mary Anne settles in though, her abundant curiosity of Vietnam and the war heighten, and she soon enough possesses as much interest in the war as many of the men. Forward, Mary Anne’s transformation into a soldier begins as she leaves her sweet femininity behind. No longer caring for her vanity, she falls “into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, [and] cut her hair short” (94). Mary Anne’s lost femininity is also evident when she handles powerful rifles like the M-16. Not only does the weapon literally scream out masculi...
In his assessment of storytelling, O’Brien highlights the challenges of telling stories by including many tales that take place after the Vietnam War. For example, back in America, the soldier’s of Vietnam found
After experiencing the war first-hand, Mary Anne finds her place in the world—in Vietnam with the Green Berets. When she first arrives at the camp, she is a young, innocent girl who does not know anything about the war; however, after staying at the camp for a few weeks and learning about the war, she loses her innocence. Mary Anne’s loss of innocence is reflected in the disturbing imagery used to describe the smell of the Special Forces hootch and her necklace of human tongues. Mary Anne’s true personality is shown when she is chanting along with tribal music in the Special Army hootch. She is no longer an innocent girl but is an experienced young woman with a burning passion for the war.
In conclusion, Mary is clearly shown to have a very manipulative and sinister character because she was a cold blooded murderer who had no feelings for her husband when she killed him, and she made people believe her grieving stories to make them feel sorry for her. But, all she wanted at the end was to cover up all of the evidence so she does not get caught and go to jail.