Moving into a new environment is not an easy thing to do. One will have to adapt to the many new changes they will face. Not everything is the same as it was back then. In the novel, The things they carried by Tim O’Brien, the character Mary Anne Bell must adjust to life in a new environment. Firstly, the character Mary Anne Bell is a seventeen year old girl from Cleveland Heights. She has a very friendly, bubbly personality, a personality that makes everyone instantly like her. She is a tall blue eyed, blonde, adorned with jewelry and makeup. She was a girl who wanted to get married and have kids with her sweetheart, Mark Fossie, who decides to bring her right into the middle of the Vietnam War because he wanted to show his comrades that it was possible to bring a girl into the base. The moment she got there, she seemed misplaced and innocent. Mary Anne was always by Mark’s side, staying inside his tent, walking around while holding hands. But over a few weeks things began to change. Mary Anne soon begins to adjust to life in a new environment, as time progressed, Mary Anne started to get curious about many things. She would ask questions about how their equipment and weapons worked. She then started to get into the habit of not wearing makeup or jewelry, she also cut her long blonde hair short along with not …show more content…
Over time Mary Anne Bell had changed. The moral of Mary Anne’s trip to Vietnam showed that the war can change anyone. She was an innocent, shy girl who was misplaced in a War, but over time she had changed to the point that no one recognized her. The war had taken over her, making it the only thing she could think of. This only happened because of the experience and the many gruesome things those people go through everyday. The war will affect anyone, making them change the way they view things just like Mary Anne. It was changing them for the worst, that is something the author wants to
Gertrude Bell (1911 – 1987) was born in Liberty, Missouri and graduated from William Jewell College in Liberty. During high school, she was the editor of the school paper, The Liberty Bell. After college, she worked at City Hall for over 20 years until devoting her full time to writing. Bell’s first juvenile historical book was Posse of Two, which was about Clay County, Missouri during the Civil War. Her books, Roundabout Road, First Crop, and Where Runs the River also take place in the same setting as Posse of Two. Inspiration for her stories came from stories her family members have told when she was young.
Mary not only had grown as an intellectual, but so had her independent stance in the world. Soon after she had graduated from medical school, she married the man in whom she loved and opened her own private practice. Mary still aspired to have a larger role among the community. After offering her business to the government, she applied for a role in the U.S. Army, however, she was denied and instead offered the
A 9-year-old girl named Linda is drafted to fight in a war in Vietnam. She is trained for a few weeks, then flown away. The young girl is scared and confused; however, Linda must hide her feelings in order to be respected. After a few days at war, she is tragically killed in action. In truth, an experience like this is enough to frighten even a 17-year-old girl or young man.
Mary would sit quietly for she was a bit shy. Their friendship grew over the coming years. These good friends would become an intricate part of one another’s lives. They made it their duty to keep
A woman named Mary Anne Bell goes to Vietnam to visit her boyfriend Mark Fossie. As time passes Mary Anne changes but her change isn’t very different from the men. She starts to not wear makeup, cutting her hair short, but she learns how to shoot guns and help with soldiers'
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
It is hard to tell what is true and not true in a novel, especially when the author says, “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (68). The character Mary Anne Bell was too crazy for this novel though. The most unrealistic characters in The Things They Carried is Mary Anne Bell because she went to the war as a civilian not a soldier, embodies the theme loss of innocence, and there are other character that feel the same loss. There are many events that take place that makes Mary Anne an implausible character. The whole reason that she comes to Vietnam is that she is visiting her boyfriend, and not even the other soldiers believe Rat
Mary was a woman, and women were not allowed to fight in the war, so she changed herself into a man. Mary ann is now Thomas Edward “I always get looks, do you think they know?” So how did Mary do it, how did she trick the recruitment officers into thinking she was a man. In her diary herself she tells us everything, she was a twisted woman.
He would show her off to the other soldiers, excited that she would be flying over to visit. “…for a fact that someday they would be married, and live in a fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie, and have three healthy yellow-haired children…” (90) However, once she arrived, she takes on a transformation that baffles Fossie. Her transformation causes the imagination between her and Mark Fossie to be
The grueling experience she was forced to undergo changed Anne’s personality from a energetic and silly schoolgirl to an insightful and sophisticated adolescent. Before the Secret
“Today more than 14 million men, women, and children have been forced to flee their homes, towns, and countries because they are afraid to stay” (Gilbert 9). In the book, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Ha, a young girl, grew up in Saigon, Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Before the war she was just like every other girl living in South Vietnam. She went to school, had friends, played with her doll, and she is a little stubborn but who could blame her. Ha is the only girl out of the four children.
Mary Boykin Chesnut was a prominent member of the upper-class society in the South during the Civil War. She was married to James Chesnut, the general of the South Carolina reserves. Mary Chesnut is the author of her Civil War diary which details the society of Southerners during the war. She had access to a great deal of information through her husband, and she relays this information through her diary. Mary Chesnut’s diary gives insight into pivotal events during the war and details her own opinions about the Civil War.
"They varied the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity." -O 'Brien. The Things They Carried by Tim O 'Brien, is about how war can destroy you, with an horrible end always. O 'Brien use the symbolism to show that war can destroy your humanity and innocence.
(O’Brian 110). O’Brien wants us to see her like all the soldiers do, scared of her change. She doesn't care about anything but going out on dangerous missions and killing Vietcong. There is no risk for her, she doesn't care. As proved by the author, Mary Anne has all of her
Most people can understand that when a soldier comes back from war, he is not going to be the same. He has seen too much and done too much to still be the innocent boy he had been. In the novel, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, he not only puts the effect of war for soldiers, but for regular civilians as well. The novel is saying that war affects females even though they could not fight in war. The message is conveyed through female characters that have felt sorrow and emptiness during and after the war.