Desertion in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong :: Things They Carried Essays

Desertion in Sweetheart of the claim Tra Bong The Sweetheart of the air Tra Bong is a fable of many an other(prenominal) things when looked at from the right perspective. The validity of the tale actually has nothing to do with its main purpose, which is to explain how Vietnam changed the American soldiers who were a part of the conflict. OBriens purpose is to tell his readers of the effect that Vietnam had on American GIs. Told by Rat Kiley, the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong can be seen as a touching cheat story sweethearts united even during a war. However, the true focus of the story is not love but change and desertion. Kiley is telling the story to illustrate how all GIs changed in their Vietnam experience. The fact that the main character is a woman drives his point even farther home. She is the very portrait of mainstream, nutrient America the only thing she lacks is an apple pie. Kiley describes her as This wily blonde - just a kid, just barely out of higher(pren ominal) school - she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic augmentative bags. (OBrien 90) This girl is the antithesis of what one would expect to find in Vietnam. She is pure and innocent. passim her time in Vietnam she changes from this image to something very different, she spends less time with her boyfriend, go under Fossie. Mary Anne hangs around with the Green Berets, who are very different from the other soldiers. Eventually she becomes one of them, marking a total transformation, There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. further the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girls throat was a necklace of human tongues. drawn-out and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of slovenly person wire, one overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable. (OBrien 110) Vietnam changed Mary Anne it forced her to become something as contradictory to Amer ica as the war itself. The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is too a story of desertion desertion of people and customs. Mary Anne abandon her boyfriend and her culture. As she becomes more involved into Vietnam she drifts away from her boyfriend, Fossie. She disappears one night and Fossie is distraught, Gone, Fossie said, Rat, listen, shes sleeping with somebody.