The Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Character Analysis

The Unfortunate Intertwining of Innocence and Death

Death and innocence are two major concepts that are connected in the The Things They Carried. When the soldiers and O’Brien first arrived in Vietnam, they had not yet began killing a single person, and unfortunately their livelihood was stolen from them when they were unlawfully drafted, and forced to carry the burden of death. They carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. Before the war, the soldiers did not have any experience; they didn't know how to kill, how to remove a bullet or how to cope with their friends dying in cold blood. Before the war, they were pure. The war consumed them, swallowed them up, and spit them out. The Vietnam War turned these men into

Mary Anne was the girlfriend of a soldier, who had been shipped from America to Vietnam. She started out as an innocent blonde, wearing culottes and a pink sweater, but due to her curiosity and lack of fear for the war, she became fascinated with killing. After, becoming intoxicated with Vietnam, Mary Anne fell into a group of Green Berets, and vanished into the countryside. “She had crossed to the other side. She is now part of the land. She wore her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill." (116.Sweetheart of the Tra Bong). She is a symbol of what Vietnam can do to a person. Mary Anne came in with a sense of naivety and, a representation of complete ignorance towards the entire concept of war. The tale is about loss of innocence. Mary Anne is just a young girl from the suburbs, she personifies innocence to the soldiers. Throughout the chapter, her progression from a sweet girlfriend to something more malevolent than the Green Berets is an analogy for the loss of innocence through which all soldiers of Vietnam go through. “I mean, when we first got here—all of us—we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we all learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne.” (97. Song of the Tra Bong).The soldiers all pass into the war, into the

O'Brien and the rest of the soldiers thought death to be distant from reality, but the shock of living with a sudden death changed them from innocent boys cold to cynical men. The Vietnam War was a brute wake up call to create an overwhelming experience with death. The young men are thrown into a situation for which they were severely unprepared for. The draft does not give the men a choice on whether or not they are involved in war, so in turn, the characters are forced to cope by whatever means necessary in their fight to keep their own