Comparing Mary Anne in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong and Kurtz in Apocalypse Now
In 1979, Francis Coppola released a film that he said he hoped "would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war" (as quoted in Hagen 230). His film, Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, is the story of Captain Benjamin Willard's (Martin Sheen) journey to the interior of the jungle of Southeastern Asia for the purpose of executing his orders to track down Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Once Kurtz is located, Willard is to "terminate his command with extreme prejudice" because Kurtz has raised an army of deserters and natives, whom he rules over like a fanatical war lord- When Willard finally reaches Kurtz's compound and meets him, he discovers a man who has descended into primitive barbarism. From the beginning of their encounter, Kurtz knows why Willard was sent to find him and makes no effort to stop Willard from slaying him with a machete. With his mission accomplished, Willard boards the boat that will take him. back to civilization.
Tim O'Brien's story "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is like Apocalypse Now in that it is also about a character who "crossed to the other side." Her name is Mary Anne and her boyfriend, Mark Fossie, has her shipped over to Vietnam to be with him. However, instead of reacting to the atmosphere of the war as Fossie thougbt she would, she becomes fascinated with the mystery of it, and over the course of the story is completely drawn in by the jungle's allure. Over a period of weeks, she disappears on ambushes with a nearby squad of Green Berets and when finally confronted by Fossie, he fi...
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...e Now (1979): Joseph Conrad and the Television War." Hollvwood As Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context. Ed. Peter C. Rollins. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983. 230-245.
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story," Writing As Re-Vision: A Studenl's Anthology Ed. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights, MA: Simon and Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996. 550-558.
__________. "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,." The Things They Carried. New York: Viking Penguin. 1990. 101-125.
__________. "The Vietnam in Me." Writing As Re- Vision: A Student's Antholoqy. 559-571.
Phillips, Gene D. Conrad and Cinema: The Art of Adaptation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995.
Watts, Cedric. 'Heart of Darkness.' The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Ed. J.H. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 45-62.
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
Many debates have been waged over the decades on what will be taxed, on who shall be taxed and how taxes are collected. Since the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, the debate has intensified, centering on how high to make the income tax rate. Most Americans were not concerned since the Amendment was sold to them as something that would only affect corporations and the rich. With ever increasing fervor these corporations created lobbyists to convince Congress to exempt them from some or all of the income tax. The big breakthrough in this was taxing the worker directly with payroll taxes during World War II. This method of collecting income tax was sold to Americans as temporary, but Congress has extended it indefinitely and the public has become used to it. The next few decades saw the debate revolve around creating tax breaks for individuals in an attempt to modify behavior or spending. This has resulted in over 67,000 pages of tax code and an entire industry devoted to tax compliance and evasion, with the unintended behavioral change of corporations and the rich parking their money outside of the United States in small island nations to avoid taxation. These offshore accounts are estimated to hold $10 trillion dollars, a number approximate to the national debt. The FairTax Act should be enacted because it eliminates all federal income taxes for individuals and corporations, eliminates all federal payroll withholding taxes, abolishes estate and capital gains taxes and repeals the 16th Amendment; thus eliminating the need for offshore accounts.
I. You might have heard politicians in the news, talk about overhauling our tax system with a new fix-all idea, the flat-tax. This would simplify our overly complicated tax system and might seem appealing at first glance, however there are serious problems with it.
trivial' such as watching a cat sleep on our belly or staring at clouds in the
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.
This paper will take a close look at the concepts of the "flat tax," and look at the possible benefits and potential failings. Although there is a basic format to the flat tax, there are multiple flat tax proposals that have been offered by conservatives. Along with critiquing the basic format of the flat tax, this paper will compare an...
Many studies have established that a developing organism is susceptible to exogenous and endogenous factors during certain stage of the organism’s development. The effects of ethyl alcohol or ethanol on the developing fetus, which manifest a variety of characteristic abnormalities, are collectively called Fetal alcohol Syndrome. Ethanol exposure to the fetus causes various malformation ranging from the cellular to the organismic levels with the eventual results frequently being different levels of mental retardation (3).
Would you like to have more money in your pocket? Most people believe that there will be more money in the packet if the worker’s paycheck is larger. Some people believe the solution is found in regulating the minimum wages paid to employees. There is a good reason you are earning more money, spending more money, but retaining less for personal use. There have been eleven recessions since the decade of the Great Depression beginning in 1929. We must do something about this national financial problem before it becomes a crisis. We may not recover from the next recession. This essay describes the attributes of the “Fair Tax” system, which many informed analysts will be in the best interest of the government of this country, and the people , who live here, especially you and your family. In this essay you will discover how we can alleviate the country’s major issues in financial management, enhance enforcement of immigration laws and improve the financial support of our education system. All this is proposed with change to just one government agency.
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.
According to Seaver, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is birth defects causing learning, and behavioral problems in individuals whose mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy. This disorder is very serious, yet it is recognized as one of the most preventable. This causes major issues, when something so serious could be prevented but is not. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a problem because it leaves a permanent effect on the unborn child, but some solutions could be educating women and putting up more informational posters and warning labels on products.
Prenatal alcohol exposure has become a serious problem not only in our country, but also all around the world. It is affecting the future generations of this planet and their health. The public needs to be well informed on the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure and how to prevent it from happening. By doing this, it will save our people billions of dollars as a whole and will stop abnormalities in the people. FAS and FASD are malformations that don’t need to happen and can be prevented so easily. If only the people knew the severity of the consequences to their actions.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a disorder that causes physical, mental, and learning problems. FAS is caused by drinking of alcohol during pregnancy when the baby is exposed to alcohol in the womb.
“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.
The aim of this work is a comparison between the novel "Heart of Darkness" and "Apocalypse Now," Francis F. Coppola film loosely adapted from the novel by Conrad. “Apocalypse Now” was performed as film based on the text of Conrad and placing it in the context of the Vietnam War. Although several elements were added, such as characters and situations that are not in the text, the film reflects in many ways “Heart of Darkness” in the history and development. Adapting the work of Conrad, many abstract things that are not in the text, jump to the screen. In other words, text transformation into visual representation vision adds a vision of evil in men, the fear of death, nostalgia for the home, etc. The film has
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome differs in each individual that is diagnosed with it. Unfortunately, 20% of babies have been exposed to alcohol because of the mother’s decision during the pregnancy (An Individual’s Place). Besides the 20% of babies that are exposed to alcohol, 1 out of 100 babies or 40,000 babies that are born have been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Rank, J.). Those babies that have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome grow up and become “the forgotten kids”. The children can do everyth...