Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Character Analysis

Ibrahim Ibrahim

English 10 Enriched

Harris

4/30/2023

The Things They Carried Essay

The Things They Carried is a fictional novel written by Tim O’Brien about the Vietnam War from 1954-1975. In the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, it is assumed that because Mary Anne is a young woman she will react differently than the male soldiers to the war. For example, Mark Fossie assumed that visiting the village would be too dangerous for Mary, and it was assumed that since Mary was a young woman the war wouldn’t affect her mental health in the same way that it affected the men.

The chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” goes on to show how war changes people, especially how it can change women. The war ends up changing her the most then it does any of the male soldiers. 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'

“You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterward it’s never the same. A question of degree. Some make it intact, some don’t make it at all.” (109) This quote is saying that people who are in the war go in as one type of person, but when they come back out they change and become a different person and it doesn’t depend on if they are male or female. This is the exact thing that happened with Mary Anne. She later starts to wear no makeup, cuts her hair short, and learns how to shoot guns. She starts to leave weeks at a time with the Greenies going on ambush without telling Mark. It got so far that she just leaves Mark and everyone else to go into the mountains. This is a very heavy change not unlike any other changes we’ve seen in the male