The Realization Of Women In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that demonstrates the negative aspects of war, and how the roles and fantasies created for women are far from reality. Although the main focus is on the men and their experiences, O’Brien also puts importance on the way that women move away from their traditional roles - women who are idealized and completely separate from the war and the soldiers’ circumstances and who will be ready to welcome their courageous lovers if they return from the war. Moreover, specifically with one of the female characters, O’Brien shows that similar to the male characters, the women are heavily influenced by the çulture and hostile environment. In summary, through the difference between female

Initially she is dressed up in sexy and feminine clothing, as shown by Rat’s description: “This seventeen-year-old doll in her goddamn culottes, perky and fresh-faced” (92), and acts in a romantic manner, similar to that of the idealistic woman, as shown by the fact that “over the next two weeks they stuck together like a pair of high school steadies [...] always holding hands, always laughing over some private joke.” (90). However, as time passes, she begins transforming into a much less feminine figure, wearing tank tops and shorts, learning how to shoot and essentially becoming a part of the Greenies. Furthermore, Mary Anne distances herself so much from the idealistic woman that she becomes “unnatural”, as demonstrated by the fact that her humming in the Greenies’ hut was freaky and inhuman to Mark and Rat. Mary Anne becomes obsessed with the war-like environment and eventually vanishes into the jungle, transforming into a folcloric wild being, almost inhuman. In reflection, the reader and men who had known her for her femininity from the beginning are horrified as she has changed and become a primal and animal-like soldier wearing a necklace of human