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Mary Anne Bell In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Just one step on Vietnam soil can change a person. Some fear that change while others learn to embrace it. Some find out that it isn’t a change at all, but instead a calling to who they really are. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, everyone experiences their one step and realize their lives are no longer going to me the same, especially Mary Anne Bell. In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” Mary Anne has an awakening impulse into who she was always destined to be, a true soldier. She becomes part of the land, and for some that is haunting. Mary Anne shows up in Vietnam on a helicopter as a true American girl: “She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexation like strawberry ice cream” (O’Brien 89). That first appearance seems …show more content…

She feels that it is beginning to feel more like home. Some of the soldiers observe “There was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself. In many ways she remained naïve and immature, still a kid, but Cleveland Heights now seemed very far away” (O’Brien 94). As Mark suggests Mary Anne should head home she made proof of that new authority in her voice. She firmly states “Everything I want, she said, is right here” (O’Brien 94). Mary Anne knows this is her new home and she is not planning on leaving, unless that means going out and exploring off camp some more. “The next morning she was gone. The six Greenies were gone, too,” she truly begins to become who she really is, “It was nearly three weeks before she returned. But in a sense she never returned. Not entirely, not all of her” (O’Brien 100). Mary Anne is transforming, …show more content…

The new Mary Anne is a haunting and brave animal who is now accustomed to Vietnam. She is scared of nothing: “At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues,” tongues that showed she is part of the Vietnamese culture, tongues that showed she is not longer the ideal American girl (O’Brien 105). Mary Anne wants to be this place: “Sometimes I want to eat this place. The whole country-the dirt, the death-I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me. That’s how I feel. It’s like this appetite. I get scared sometimes-lots of times-but it’s not bad. You know? I feel close to myself” (O’Brien 106). Mary Anne is this place: “And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back” (O’Brien

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As was common at the time, Mary stayed with her husband throughout the war. She served as a camp follower to her husband’s regiment. Other camp followers enlisted alongside Mary for shelter, work, food, and safety. Women were allowed to join because the army couldn’t afford to lose more soldiers due to family crisis, and with the wives nearby the soldiers would not need to unenlist to help their families in need. Given this extreme reasoning, the camp followers were not always wholly accepted into the group.

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Mary Anne is flown over by Mark to Vietnam and at first the two are inseparable and extremely happy to be together. Mary Anne is fascinated with everything that is going on in Vietnam. From the culture and lifestyle of the native people to how to shoot a gun, Mary Anne wants to learn all about life in Vietnam. Soon Mary Anne becomes so obsessed with the war that she goes out on an ambush in the middle of the night with the Green Berets (O’Brien 97). Mark Fossie is enraged that Mary Anne would go off on an ambush.

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She leaves her house and heads out for a thrill seeking journey where she encounters new friends, finds love, and explores how the real world works. Reading this story, I could understand exactly how she was feeling because she was basically writing in a journal. Since she was the “author” she would directly characterize what she was doing or how she felt. An example of a direct characterization would be Mary’s main line “I am Mary Iris Malone and I am not okay.”

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The United States of America conducted lotteries to determine the order of call to the military service in the Vietnam War for men ages 16-21. Many men were forced to leave loved ones and special people behind. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien gives readers the inside look of what it was like to be an American Soldier in the Vietnam War. His memoir includes unforgettable images of a nightmarish war that people are still trying to absorb. The book is a set of connected short chapters that tell the stories of soldiers before, during and after the war.

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The more Mary Anne was there the more comfortable she got and she started to become out of control. The soldiers had no idea who she was becoming and they knew it was because of the war, “For a long while the girl gazed down at Fosse, almost blankly, and in the candlelight her face had the composure of someone perfectly at peace with herself” (O’Brien, 105). Rat Kelly’s memory recalled Mary Anne changing while she was in Vietnam. She started to kill and turn into someone other than when he first emt, but her attitude was still there that everyone loved. O’Brien shared this story readers understand that the war can change anyone and

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As she becomes engaged in the war Mary Anne evolves to embrace the savage beauty of the land and is lured by the mysteriousness of war. Mary Anne’s presence represents a semblance of normalcy and beauty, contrasting with the harsh realities and horror of combat. This beauty lies in her determination to follow her heart despite the dangers surrounding her. Her interest with Vietnamese culture and integration into their way of life reveals both the allure and the terrifying consequences of war. The beauty lies in her curiosity and willingness to embrace new experiences, even in the midst of a war zone.

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Those involved in war must pay a physical, emotional, and psychological tax. In the Vietnam War, this tax was greater than ever and weighed more once the war was over. The impact is not easily forgotten and though attempts are made to heal, war haunts the psyche of those who survive it. In the case of Tim O’Brien and Yusuf Komunyakaa, it took nearly two decades to put pen to paper and write about the experience. Luckily, their time in Vietnam eventually lead to powerful work such as O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”.

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Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings upon closer inspection, with the exploration of the characters’ emotions and the underlying motif of love creating the opportunity to trace how war changes a person in the realm of his emotions. The Vietnam warfare acts as a catalyst for all of the unsettling changes in the soldiers’ minds, raising the question whether the battlefield is actively responsible for this result or merely accelerating the inevitable manifestation of these personal issues, inherent in every person. In the collection of essays

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Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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Mary Anne Bell’s character shows how much war really changes someone. She was shipped over to Vietnam by her boyfriend, Mark Fossie, at just seventeen years of age. She was an innocent, young and pretty girl from Cleveland Heights. When she first arrived,

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Tim O’Brien, a soldier who is hardened by the events of the war, arrives home with immense guilt and new, conflicting emotions that he must learn to control. His fellow soldier Norman Bowker returns from the war, unable to cope with the war mentally as well as emotionally. Vietnam also drastically alters the personality of Mary Anne Bell, an American civilian visiting Vietnam, into someone unrecognizable to those who knew her before she had traveled to Vietnam. The transformative psychological effects of the war on Americans in Vietnam are illustrated through the characterizations of Tim O’Brien, Norman Bowker, and Mary Anne Bell in The Things They Carried. Tim O’Brien transforms after the war, and he becomes mentally burdened by guilt, as well as exceedingly emotionally challenged.

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Writing Prompt 1 What does it feel like to carry the weight of a nation at the same time as being a teenager? In the novel “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien explores the nature of the Vietnam War and the children who were sent there to fight the war. In the opening chapter of the novel, O’Brien makes it clear of the effect the war has had on his fellow soldiers and himself by the repeated usage of the word “carried”. This term defines the rest of the novel by establishing connections between the soldiers and their lives back home.

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Her transformation was shocking. " This Mary Anne wasn 't no virgin but at least she was real. I saw

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Literary analysis America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

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