When America Turns into Vietnam

What a classic "Mary Anne" would look like

This chapter is a perfect example of what war does to the soldier, to the human being. The events that take place in the Song Tra Bong are imperative to the point Tim is trying to get across throughout this book; war and its effects on the individual who experienced it. In this chapter, Mark Fossie decides to bring his high school sweetheart Mary Anne to Vietnam. At first, this seems like an excellent idea –although very out of place– and everyone seems satisfied with a girl in the middle of Vietnam during a war.

Mary Anne is the symbol of innocence and home. She embodies America perfectly; with her blonde hair, blue eyes, bubbly attitude, culottes and her sweet disposition. Her attitude towards war was more like curiosity and interest; almost like a cheerleader visiting the opposite team’s locker rooms. But soon, Mary Anne’s inner America was gone. She became Vietnam and the war slowly swallowed her up, just like it did with every single one of the soldiers in this story.

What killed Mary Anne was war. It was Vietnam; it was the adrenaline, the thrill that comes with the kill. The bubbly 17 year old was no longer bubbly and cute, she was intrigued, and she was carrying guns, cutting her hair off, becoming war itself.  I think that this story was trying to portray what war does to the body and what goes beyond the body: the soul. Mary Anne was never the same, and her destiny is unknown to the reader. It wouldn’t really matter whether it was a woman or a man,  war would still take over the person, take over anyone who sets foot on the jungles of Vietnam, whoever steps into the darkness of war itself. However, introducing a female character and letting her become a savage, a killer and get consumed into war, creates a deeper shock and increases the agony and cruelty of killing innocence –killing the one thing the soldiers love and turning it into the one thing they fear more than their enemy: war.

The fact that Rat tells the story does make it a little less believable, since he has a reputation for telling very imaginative things, things that might not necessarily be true. Nonetheless, the story is so unbelievable, it becomes true; it becomes possible. The outcome is so surreal it actually makes you doubt why couldn’t it happen? It is so absurd it makes sense, and this is why I think of it as a great, true war story.  This story has no moral, and as far as we know the facts could be fiction and the fiction could be facts. The play of words and connections to both the real and imaginary world make this story seem real, like a true war story. The unreal facts are combined with the cruelty of war and together, they make it completely believable and fit all of O’Brien’s criteria and define it as a true war story.