Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Essays - 756 Words

In the short story, â€Å"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. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Mark Fossie decided he was going to sneak his girlfriend onto his base in Vietnam. When she arrived, Rat Kiley described her like this, â€Å"A tall big-boned blonde. At best, Rat said, she was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion†¦show more content†¦He was proud, yes, but also amazed. A different person, it seemed, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.† She stopped wearing makeup and jewelry. She cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark bandana. She was beginning to look like a man. She learned how to shoot a gun. Mary Anne began talking her and Mark’s future. Instead of getting married like they had planned, she wants to just live together for a while to see what it’s like. Everything about her was changing. She was no longer bubbly, she rarely laughed, and she was going off on her own more and more. One night she never came home. She had spent all night with the green berets on ambush. When Mary returned, she was hardly recognizable. Mark was fed up, he made her wash her hair and clean up. Things seemed to be all right. But there was a great deal of tension between them. Finally, Mark started talking about sending her back home. Mary Anne was gone the next morning along with the 6 other green berets. When she returned, her appearance had completely changed. â€Å"It was then, Rat said, that he picked out Mary Anne’s face. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark-not blue, though, but a bright glowing jungle green. She did not pause at Fossie’s bunker. She cradled her weapon and moved swiftly to the Special Forces hooch and followed the others inside.† When Mark entered the green berets hooch, he first thought he saw the same old sweet Mary Anne. She was wearing a pink sweater and a skirt. But there was noShow MoreRelatedSweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis1265 Words   |  6 PagesOn page 92 in â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,† Rat Kiley uses the simile â€Å"...like a cheerleader visiting the opposing teams locker room,† to describe the sight of Mary Anne visiting the village of Tra Bong. Mary Anne is compared to a cheerleader because she is a young cute girl all dolled up in nice clothes while visiting a poor village with â€Å"thatched roofs† and â€Å"naked children.† This simile is to compare the odd sight of a well dressed girl in this run down village in Vietnam, to illustrate howRead More Sweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong as Metaphor Essay1150 Words   |  5 PagesSweetheart of the Song of Tra Bong as Metaphor  Ã‚   The Vietnam War is a strange and unexplainable event in American history. The controversies surrounding the American involvement in Vietnam and the need for Vietnam veterans to tell their stories of the war are prevalent in the post-Vietnam culture of America. The stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane(89). The story of the sweetheart of the SongRead More Transformation in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Essay808 Words   |  4 Pages Transformation in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong In Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Tim OBrien gives a dynamic example of how even the deep roots of ones culture can be modified. The focus is on the young lady, whose boyfriend manages to have her shipped over to Vietnam from the U.S. She is then thrown into a completely foreign culture that thousands of American GIs were experiencing. This change in culture affected the strongest and most skilled of Americas ground troops. The affectsRead MoreAnd Symbolism In Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong, By OBrien1362 Words   |  6 Pageswhere he has to make his life-changing decision. It appeals to the visual sense by describing the shoreline and even the sense of taste by talking about the tiny red berries that lined the bushes. Later in the story, during the chapter â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,† O’Brien describes a gory, even ferocious side of someone that most of his readers had probably never even thought possible. Mary Anne Bell had just come back with the Green Berets, and here the narrator is describing the horrific necklaceRead MoreAnalysis Of Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong In Things They Carried889 Words   |  4 PagesThings They Carried Essay Anything can change a person if they are not ready for that change. The short story Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong, in Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien represents this by showing change in Mary Anne, who is a character the reader probably would not expect to see in a book about the Vietnam War. There are many parts show the change in her from the average high school girl she used to be into a predatory killer, but there is only one reason for her change, and that isRead MoreCharacter Analysis of Mary Anne Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong1305 Words   |  6 Pages English 1020 22 February 2012 Mary Anne Bell of â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong† by Tim O’Brian It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong†, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent â€Å"sweetheart† to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions becauseRead More Exposing the Truth in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Essay2210 Words   |  9 PagesExposing the Truth in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong   Ã‚   Dear Mom and Dad: The war that has taken my life, and many thousands of others before me, is immoral, unlawful, and an atrocity, (letter of anonymous soldier qtd. In Fussell 653). Tim OBrien, a Vietnam war vet, had similar experiences as the soldier above. Even though OBrien didnt die, the war still took away his life because a part of him will never be the same. Even in 1995, almost thirty years after the war, OBrien wroteRead More Comparing Mary Anne in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong and Kurtz in Apocalypse Now2602 Words   |  11 PagesComparing Mary Anne in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong and Kurtz in Apocalypse Now  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚   In 1979, Francis Coppola released a film that he said he hoped would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war (as quoted in Hagen 230). His film, Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrads 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, is the story of Captain Benjamin Willards (Martin Sheen) journey to the interior of the jungle of Southeastern AsiaRead MoreLoss, a Common Theme in Sweetheart of the Song Trabong and Fences1419 Words   |  6 PagesMark Fossie from the â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong† and Troy Maxson from â€Å"Fences† are two different literary characters in two different types of literary work that have many similarities. The â€Å"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong† written by Tim O† Brien is a fiction story. â€Å"Fences† by August Wilson is a play. Both of these literature works have a theme of loss, whether it is of the character himself or someone the character loves deeply. The loss can be a physical loss of the person through deathRead MoreThe Endorphins Start Of The Song Tra Bong1162 Words   |  5 Pagesbecome intimate with danger; you’re in touch with the far side of yourself, as though it’s another hemisphere, and you want to string out and go wherever the trip takes you and be host to all the possibilities inside yourself.† (Page 109, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong†) Definition: noun 1. any of a group of peptides occurring in the brain and other tissues of vertebrates, and resembling opiates, that react with the brain s opiate receptors to raise the pain threshold. Divestiture: â€Å"And what preps Milkman