The Things They Carried Loss Of Innocence Quotes

One main theme of this book is how war can change people and this shows how it changed just an ordinary girl who ended up getting "dirty".

You can't feel like that anywhere else’”(O’Brien 111). Mary Anne is inevitably drawn to the other side—the other side in this case being the Vietnam War itself. She is not completely part of it yet but she sure is fascinated by it, and will be part of it soon. She displays the danger of throwing away all separation between herself and the war. She is at the point where she wants to become one with the war. However towards the end of the story, Mary Ann becomes a completely different person. This can be shown perfectly in the quote, “She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill”(O’Brien 116).

In the short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien, the author shows that no matter what the circumstances were, the people that were exposed to the Vietnam War were affected greatly. A very young girl named Mary Anne Bell was brought by a boyfriend to the war in Vietnam. When she arrived she was a bubbly young girl, and after a few weeks, she was transformed into a hard, mean killer.

It took Tim O'Brien 20 years after the war was done for him to write the novel The Things They Carried. When O’Brien wrote the novel the things they carried, he had to relive everything he went through. The purpose of writing this novel was to let everyone that was not there themselves know what it was like on a person. O’Brien was the protagonist and the antagonist is the war in Vietnam. When O’Brien wrote this novel his intended audience was people that were not in the Vietnam War. The novel was more mortality and death but, also has shame and guilt a lot throughout the story.

It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent “sweetheart” to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions because although Mary Anne felt at peace with her transformation, she was also disconnected from reality.

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is an interesting story that takes place during the Vietnam War. O’Brien writes in third person omniscient and is only in the head of the main character; First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. In the story O’Brien describes not only the physical baggage each soldier carries, but hints at the emotional baggage as well. With this, readers get to see exactly what goes on in the soldier’s minds, but also Cross’s mind and what kind of character he is. Throughout the story Cross confesses profusely about loving Martha, who in return doesn’t see him as a lover but a friend. Martha is Cross’s friend and crush who constantly writes to him. Because Cross is so infatuated with Martha, she clouds his mind almost 24/7. In the beginning of the story all Cross could think of is Martha, however because of this he

Laurence Stern wrote, “ No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” By interpreting this quote, Stern says that no one can understand what it feels like for a man to have his mind torn apart by two equivalent forces that pull him apart in opposite directions inside. There was much underlying meaning and connection from Laurence Stern’s quote and to The Things They Carried. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien is the author as well as the character who is pulled apart by two projects: war and morals. The war in Vietnam heavily impacts each soldier causing them to yearn for

Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried tells a story of how war can change a person. It shows the struggle to overcome sadness (about death) and the struggle to deal with death; it shows the human side of war. This story gives strong feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc. and allows the reader to deeply understand the character. Tim O'Brien allows the audience to feel this feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc. better by writing this book as fiction. (in a true way) O'Brien's choice to write his novel as fiction does leave the reader asking a lot of questions, but this (type of writing or art) allows him to more (in a way that's close to the truth or true number) bring across the feeling of love, hate, guilt, etc.

This chapter covers the transition of Mary Anne Bell, of how she changed from being a normal, sweet teenage girl to being one of the Green Berets, filled with enthusiasm for the war and intrigued with the culture of Vietnam. This message is about how the innocence of women is consumed by the war and how once they begin to learn more about it, they are hopelessly entranced by it, far from returning to their usual selves. Rat talks about how, “Anne made you think about those girls back home, how they'll never understand any of this, not in a billion years. Try and tell them about it, they’ll just stare at you with those big round candy eyes. They won't understand zip.”(O’Brien 108), and this shows that women won’t understand what Vietnam really is like, they have to experience it themselves. Women also won’t understand the grueling mental pain that soldiers experience in the war.

What would you learn, push-yourself to be, or talk to someone about when you come to face the instance of war? This is one of the many questions main character, Tim O’Brien, thought about before he faced one of his biggest fears. From reading this book, Tim O’Brien learned a lot about himself through interactions with other characters, which helped the readers understand an overall theme. Over the course of the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien becomes a stronger man, learns life lessons from his close interactions, and teaches readers the importance of love and friendship. At the beginning, Tim’s main goal is to convince himself to man-up for the war that soon would change his life.

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

It is a reoccurring theme in many of the chapters. In the chapter “Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong”, Mark Fossie’s girlfriend Mary Anne Bell is brought over from the United States to Vietnam. Mary Anne represents innocence itself when she arrives in “white culottes and this sexy pink sweater” (O’Brien 86). The author uses the culottes to convey how fragile and out of place the girl is in Vietnam. This item of clothing is not something one would normally wear into a warzone. This shows the immaturity and youth of the young women; she arrives without almost any knowledge of the war and is seen as young and dumb by the men. This begins to change throughout the rest of the chapter. After a few days, Mary Anne begins to seem at home and become comfortable in a hostile environment (O’Brien 92). Vietnam is quickly and steadily changing the way she thinks and acts. When she becomes comfortable, she is slowly losing her innocence compared to when she first arrived.” She quickly fell into the habits of the bush” (O’Brien 94). She started to not brush her teeth or care about her appearance. She is now becoming “taken over” by the bush and shows the steady decline of innocence in her personality. She continues down this path of no return when she starts hanging out with the greenies (O’Brien 97). The greenies are seen as “outsiders” to the rest of the soldiers. By showing that Mary Anne is being seen hanging out with the Greenies, it shows that her innocence is completely gone now; there is nothing more than anyone can do to help her. Rat Kiley tries to tell Mark Fossie that, “man, you must be deaf. She’s already gone” (O’Brien 107). This metaphor for the loss of innocence is portrayed through a young girl, but applies to every solider in the company. Rat said,” (it) was what happened to all of them. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterward it’s never the same (O’Brien 109). It is believed that

Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it.

The moral of the story is how war changes people. Mary Anne came to the war with a long, nice, friendly and innocence mind. Later in the story after she learned how to fight a war, she cut her hair short, stop wearing jewelry and start to become more determine to fight like a soldier She changed from a naive innocent girl to a hardened soldier shedding all her former normal life.Its shows how war actually change personality. Mary Anne can no longer separate herself from Vietnam, from the wilderness and the killing. Mary Anne, the innocent persons they were would never be seen again. This moral is similar to Rat Kiley shooting a water buffalo because his personality also changed when his friend Curt Lemon was Killed. This tells us how war

1. “In any war story, especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told the way. “ (71)