The Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

SOULS OF SONG TRA BONG
Sitting on our mama’s lap, we’ve always heard stories of people who’ve had hard times in their lives; first of those who had to fight with a monster just because they didn’t listen to their parents, then as we grew up, those who had to leave school to save the world from those with malevolent intentions. But at the end, a story was a story, and those people killed the monsters, never did something without their parents’ approval, and turned back to school to get a master’s degree; just to convince us kids that everything that was in a story was the right thing to do to, and the characters we read, were heroes that would never make mistakes. Growing up this way, I had an implicit assumption that a character had to show heroic behaviors to have an impact on me. I’ve never been happier to notice that I was mistaken. Even though the society makes one believe that a story is only valuable if it gives moral messages, the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, implies the idea that stories don’t have to end in blooming

In the story “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” O’Brien shows the potential moral ambiguity in anyone by the contrast of Mary Anne when she first arrives to Vietnam and at the end when she joins to the greenies and wears a