Everyone is born innocent. As people grow they slowly lose their innocence. They are exposed to evils, pain, and suffering that rids them of their innocence. Throughout the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, readers watch as the characters lose their innocence throughout the war. Tim O'brien constantly conveys a loss of innocence through his characters. The author, Tim O’Brien, includes himself in the short stories in his novel. The reader learns of O’Brien’s experiences as the novel goes on, but it’s not until the end that the reader realizes O’Brien lost his innocence very early on. At first, in the beginning of the book, in chapter 4, On The Rainy River, O’brien explains his life and view of the war when he receives his draft notice. O’Brien had been a 21 year old college graduate who hated the war. He felt the war in Vietnam was wrong and blood was being shed for poor reasons, if any at all. He had wanted to live his life, peacefully, not wanting to be involved in a war he did not believe in. However, in the summer of 1968 O’Brien was drafted. Throughout the chapter, he explains …show more content…
In chapter 9, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, O’Brien tells the story he heard from Rat Kiley about a girl known as Mary Anne Bell. Rat explained that a fellow soldier had shipped his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell over to Vietnam to live with him. She arrived, innocent, young, and curious. As the story progresses, Mary-Anne gets consumed by the war. She loses her innocence. She goes out on killing sprees, and saves the tongues of her victims on a necklace, or so the reader can infer. She becomes comfortable with death and war. Mary Anne is a perfect example of the toll that war takes on people. From innocent and young to an animal-like hunter with a passion for war. She is an exaggeration of the effect of war on men and how war strips away
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
In the story, “Sweetheart of the song Tra Bong”, the reader acknowledges the similarities between average soldier and Mary Anne. In the beginning of the chapter, Rat Kiely decides to tell a story to the team about how a soldier decided to bring his girlfriend to vietnam. When Mary Anne first arrives, Rat Kiely describes her with a bubbly personality and very outgoing. But soon Mary Anne knew the truth about the war and that she had to fight in order to keep her life. Rat Kiely mentions, “ ‘...I mean, when we first got here- all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne’” (page 93). This quote shows the atrocious reality of war. It can be assumed that Mary Anne symbolizes
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.
The new phases of life and social context is predicated through the sum of feats and experiences as crises and adversity are usually the greatest motivator which propel individuals to become better than they were before. J.C. Burke’s ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’ (TSTB) is an example of the transitional process through entering a new, unknown area which acts as a catalyst for beneficial change. Obstructed by turmoil both mentally and physically, the protagonist Tom Brennan relieves his severe life in the town of Coghill achieving new standards in conjunction to Lisa Forrest’s article ‘Testing new waters after leaving the swimming pool’ (TNWALTS) is another type towards transitional change that explores the personal crisis and career changes over
One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way of connecting to their homes. The story depicts the soldiers by the baggage that they carry, both mentally and physically. After the death of one of his troops, Ted Lavender, Jimmy finally realizes that his actions have been detrimental to the squad as a whole. He believes that if he would have been a better leader, that Ted Lavender would have never been shot and killed. The physical and emotional baggage that Jimmy totes around with him, in Vietnam, is holding him back from fulfilling his responsibilities as the First Lieutenant of his platoon. Jimmy has apparent character traits that hold him back from being the leader that he needs to be, such as inexperience and his lack of focus; but develops the most important character trait in the end, responsibility.
Analyzing innocence has always been a difficult task, not only due to it’s rapid reevaluation in the face of changing societal values, but also due to the highly private and personal nature of the concept. The differences between how people prioritize different types of innocence - childhood desires, intellectual naivety, sexual purity, criminal guilt, etc. - continually obscures the definition of innocence. This can make it difficult for people to sympathize with others’ loss of purity, simply because their definition of that loss will always be dissimilar to the originally expressed idea. Innocence can never truly be adequately described, simply because another will never be able to precisely decipher the other’s words. It is this challenge, the challenge of verbally depicting the isolationism of the corruption of innocence, that Tim O’Brien attempts to endeavour in his fictionalized memoir, The
In this chapter O’Brien talks about a young Vietnamese soldier who he had killed with a grenade. He mentions the weight of guilt he carried with him after the event that to took place the day he killed his first man. He opens the chapter with describing the dead corps by saying, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.” Throughout the text it is implied that O’Brien cannot stop staring at the dead body as he continues to think of how the dead Vietnamese soldier lay and what the young man’s life was like and what it could have been before he had become the soldier he was. He states, in one of the interpretation of the young Vietnamese man’s life, “He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics.” O’Brien Talks about the Vietnamese soldier as if he knew him and experienced the soldier’s life himself. It’s possible that O’Brien could have talked about the dead Vietnamese life as a reference or to fantasize about his own life, and how he wish his life could’ve been if he didn’t go into war himself. O’Brien could have also thought of the young soldier’s life because of the guilt and the regret he was feeling from killing him, and
In retrospect chapter one demonstrates how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were influenced by the Vietnam War, many of the soldiers had to face the burdens of war, the lost of innocents and the sexual yearning for women. One of the fundamental themes introduced in the first few pages of the novel was the burdens many of soldiers encounter during the war. The soldiers in the novel carried some remarkably heavy physical and emotional burdens; these burdens almost always seem too much for them to carry. For instances Jimmy Cross the leader of the platoon was responsible for the lives of all soldiers in subdivision, however he was unable to keeping his soldiers alive. Another theme introduces in chapter one is the lost of innocent. The Vietnam War both defiles and terminates the innocence of those soldiers who participated in the war. Most of the soldiers in Vietnam War were young, not even twenty. Nevertheless, Tim O’Brien relentless points out that although they are young, they are killers when commanded. Many of the soldiers had to give up their innocence and become men immediately during the war. Other themes that emerge in chapter one is the sexual yarning for females. In addition with fighting Vietcong, soldiers had to endure living without any females around; which cause a lot of anxiety on them.
The narrative structure of the "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" and "How to Tell a True War Story" contains two levels, the first on being a discourse about the characters of Vietnam stories. The "I", the narrator, introduces 'Rat' Kiley as his source for the narrative that follows. He characterizes stories about war as "strange", "swirling back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and mundane". The stories have a life of their own, reality is not absolute, not final. With this image he describes the ambiguity of war itself, the normality that turns into insanity, he summarizes the narrative about Mary Ann Bell and her experiences with the war. The narrator clearly states the purposes of these stories, he is not interested in factual truths about the war, he openly questions the reliability of his source: "Rat had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement". He wants the audience to "feel exactly what he felt", an emotional experience, a subjective approach.
The chapter “Sweethearts Of The Song Tra Bong” from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is one of the most significant chapters in the novel. The chapter will keep the reader wanting to learn more about one of the main characters in the story Mary Anne Bell. The chapter starts off with Mark Fossie, announcing that his girlfriend since grade school is coming down to see him in Vietnam. Throughout the story Mary Anne transforms and converts personalities and as she is first introduced as a friendly innocent lady. O’Brien uses Mary Anne Bell as a symbolism to highlight the change of ignorance about the experiences in war throughout the story.
Originally, Bell had traveled to Vietnam to visit her boyfriend Mark Fossie, who served in the US military. She met everyone at the camp, and all of the soldiers saw her as a pure and innocent girl who would not be able to survive in Vietnam during wartime (O’Brien 92). However, Mary Ann undergoes a dramatic shift in character the longer she remains in Vietnam. She begins to gain interest in the activities of the soldiers and becomes more invested in Vietnam itself. Disappearing for hours at a time, Bell starts to participate in the raids with other soldiers and fights alongside some of the best soldiers there. Beginning with her arrival in Vietnam, Mary Ann’s personality changes from someone who conforms to society and would marry a soldier to someone who rejects the All-American sweetheart stereotype and becomes a soldier herself (Weil 38-39). Her wholesome and virtuous image before going to Vietnam has begun to thoroughly
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
Continuing on the novel, O’Brien continues on talking about his memories and revealing some of his war memories to the readers, such as, the “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” is a love story between an American girl and an American soldier in Vietnam. Because of the significance of the American girl whose name was Mary Anne, he travelled down to see his lover, who was described as, “clean and innocent”. It implies that they did not know anything about the war and did not see the terrifying parts of the war. Both the words “clean” and “innocent” denote free from the dirt of the society, connoting immature and blameless. The author uses Mary Anne as an example to delineate how the people at home saw the soldiers. Moreover, O’Brien says, “they’ll
The female figure was truly not thought of much before mid-1900s. There was still a concept of women being “less” of men, inferior beings meant to serve and pleasure. The most common and known stereotype was that of women being fragile and having an innocent and clueless mind, not capable to comprehend nor be a part of the male world. O’Brien makes sure to incorporate these mentalities indirectly in his novels. In the chapter “Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong” the character of Mary Anne is included, giving a deeper understanding of the roles of women in The Things They Carried. Just as Martha, Mary Anne was objectified at the starting of the chapter, and also stereotyped. She is introduced by Mark Fossie, her lover who is a soldier in the Vietnam War, who just “sends her money. Flies her over” (O’Brien 86). We see the reoccurring theme of men using women not as people but as objects themselves to avoid the brutality of war and the troubled feelings that come with it. To Mark Fossie it was extremely easy to just order Mary Anne to come to him, almost like demanding and needing a particular object. Mary Anne is also described as “this seventeen-year-old doll in her goddamn culottes, perky and fresh-faced, like a cheerleader visiting the opposite team’s locker room” (O’Brien 92). Just as a cheerleader visiting the opposite team’s locker room, Mary Anne being in the war was seen as a woman being
“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.