Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong
Summary
In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” Tim O’Brien recalls a story that Rat Kiley told about a medic who figured out a way to get his girlfriend to Vietnam. While Rat Kiley was stationed at a small medical base a young medic named Mark Fossie managed to get his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, to the base. At first it was a quaint and cozy atmosphere but as the weeks went on something changed in Mary.
Slowly Mary became infatuated with Vietnam, the good and bad. At nights she began going on night maneuvers with a small group of Green Berets. Mark forced her to stop going on the maneuvers but after a few weeks she was back with the Green Berets. Mark makes one more attempt to get her out of Vietnam only to have her tell him "he" doesn’t belong there. Rat Kiley was shipped out shortly after that and goes on to say that the last he heard Mary went into the jungle one night and never came back.
Analysis
In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” a loss of innocence is poured out on the pages of this story. In the line, “just a kid, just barely out of high school-she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags.” (O’Brien pg90), a true unpreparedness for what is about to happen is portrayed. The conversion from a boy to a Vietnam soldier is played out as the image of Mary, the all American girl, is stripped down and converted into a soldier “her blue eyes opaque, she seemed to disappear inside herself…a haunted look partly terror, partly rapture…it was as if she was caught in that no-man’s-land between Cleveland Heights and deep jungle. Seventeen years old. Just a child, blond and innocent, but then weren’t they all.” (O’Brien pg105).
Along the sidelines of this conversion from innocence, the by-standers assess the change. Mark Fossie considers the change in Mary devastating, while the “Greenies” eagerly welcome it. As soldiers were sent to Vietnam, a whole country was left behind voicing their opinions on whether it was right or wrong.
“Works Cited”
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction. 1st ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
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