Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Essay Example

innocent and delicate as presumed. Mary Anne joining Fossie in Vietnam also makes me believe she is very naive because she has no idea what is in store for her and of the transformation she will make, no one did.

From the very beginning Mary Anne is very curious and right away she is asking a lot of questions and is ginually interested in learning about the native’s customs and language. By the end of the second week, she jumps right in with the medics and “even as four casualties came in she wasn’t afraid to get her hands bloody” (99). Mary Anne learns how to clean, assemble and use weapons. She was described as having “D-cup guts, trainer bra brains. ” (96) because she was so eager to learn everything, fear was not a factor. After joining the Green Berets on night time ambushes, Mary Anne started to look and act more like a soldier.

Mary Anne’s appearance started to change, “no cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark green bandana” (99), as though those things were no longer important to her. Her bubbliest seemed to be gone and her body starts to become harder in places it was once soft,”even her once bright blue eyes had transformed into a bright glowing jungle green (107). Mary Anne starts changing her ideas on her plans, still wanting to get married but not right away, wanting to live together first and “just test it out” and maybe not have three kids (99).

At one time, those things were very important to Mary

Anne, Fossie did not understand Mary Anne’s transformation. She was like most of the young men who went off to war in the way that her innocence was dissipating quickly. However, unlike a lot of the others, her thirst for combat and everything Vietnam continued to increase. Just like any other young adult, going through experiences in life, people will learn from their experiences and will become less innocent and less naive about life. At first, the changes Mary Anne is going through seem natural for almost anyone in her situation; only difference being is that she is a woman.

Once Mary Anne gets the taste for combat and really starts to embrace Vietnam, she feels she is where she belongs. It is not surprising that the feelings and ideas Mary Anne once had about her future life with Mark Fossie start to change during her transformation. Prior to Vietnam, Mary Anne had little life experience and the plans she had made for her life, in the sixth grade, have changed because Mary Anne has changed. She loves the excitement and everything about her new life in Vietnam so passionately that she couldn’t just return to The States and live what would be a much more boring life by comparison.

Mary Anne would have not have been able to do it, she was becoming just as much a part of Vietnam as it was becoming a part of her. In the end, just like the other soldiers,” Mary Anne had come over clean and come out dirty and then afterward, it’s never the same” (110). Wearing a necklace made of human tongues, Fossie

told Mary Anne that “she was in a place where she doesn’t belong” she replied, confessing “her appetite for Vietnam, how it was inside her and how it all made her feel so alive and she knew exactly who she was there and she couldn’t find that anywhere else” (111).

Mary Anne was possessed by the rush of feelings being in Vietnam at brought her, she craved it. She enjoyed going out on night patrols in her camouflage, barefoot, and even stopped carrying a weapon, as though she was invincible, “there were times when she took death-wish chances- things even the Greenies balked at” (115). As Mary Anne’s story comes to an end, it is said, “one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and never came back” (115). For all they knew she was still alive, as no body, no equipment, and no clothing were ever recovered.

Although she was at peace within herself, she had become desensitized of war and killing, in fact, she enjoyed it, this shows how disconnected from society and reality she had become. Mary Anne had come in to this war zone and made a complete transformation. Some of the soldiers couldn’t handle the sights they saw and the experiences they experienced but Mary Anne embraced it. She adapted to war in way that is a little un-natural and inhumane. Killing and wearing a tongue necklace are definitely not normal and would be the same whether she was male or female.

Although, had this story been about a male soldier, the reactions and opinions would be much different, more accepting. With that said,

it probably wouldn’t have even been a story at all, men are expected to go to war and become warriors in combat. At the end of Mary Anne’s transformation, she becomes part of the jungle, exactly where she wanted to be. It is unclear if she is alive or dead, but if she is dead, she died in a place she loved, doing what she loved. Some may consider her choices to be strange and that she had possibly lost her mind.

However, if Mary Anne were able to explain herself, I think she would be pleased with the way her life turned out. She was brave and didn’t care if others agreed with her way of life, she did what made her happy and at the end of the day, that is what most people aim for in their lifetime. As long as Mary Anne is at peace with her choices, no one else’s opinions really matter. And if Mary Anne is still out in that jungle, I am sure she is still exactly where she wants to be and doing what she loves to do.