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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, is an emotion provoking collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. One of those stories, The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong, is about Rat Kiley, who had the reputation of “heating up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt” and that quality is displayed in his account of a girl named Mary Anne. In Rat’s story, Mark Fossie, a medic, flew in his girlfriend, Mary Anne, to Vietnam where she gets enveloped and changed by the excitement of the war. Rat Kiley created the story of Mary Anne to characterize changes that happen to all people who go to war. Rat also highlights the idea that we have “these blinders on about women”. One of the reasons that I think Rat Kiley invented Mary Anne was to show how people are affected by being in a war. In the beginning, Mark Fossie only noticed small …show more content…

Mark Fossie would grin at this. He was proud, yes, but also amazed. A different person, it seemed, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.” (94). Mark saw that Mary Anne’s demeanor changed and her new “tight, intelligent focus” made him happy, but he saw “a different person” and did not know what to do about it. Other changes like “No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark green bandanna.” and she gained “a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself” (94). Mark noticed these small changes in Mary Anne as she enlivened and assimilates with life in Vietnam. After Mary Anne goes with the Greenies on an ambush and when she got back “Fossie took a half step forward and hesitated. It was as though he had

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