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The Things They Carried Loss Of Innocence Quotes

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Former Senator Jim Webb once said, “World War II brought the Greatest Generation together. Vietnam tore the Baby Boomers apart” (AARP). This can be seen as a greater metaphor for the novel The Things They Carried. This is especially prevalent when comparing relationships in the book. While all can agree that war is hell, it is Vietnam that really changed how war was seen through the eyes of the soldiers. In the novel, Curt Lemon represents the classic Greatest Generation attitude; his friendship with Rat Kiley also reflects this. They have a more traditional friendship. However, Mark Fossie and his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, represents the polar opposite: the torn apart Baby Boomer generation, living in the entropy of war. Throughout the novel The Things …show more content…

From the moment Mary Anne arrives at the base, the other soldiers know that this was a mistake. But Mark Fossie, blinded by love, doesn’t realize this. He believes that Mary Anne’s innocence could be preserved. But oh how he was wrong. In perhaps the greatest mistake in the entire Vietnam war, a soldier brought his girlfriend to Vietnam. Quickly her innocence disappears, and she turns into something wicked. She wears a necklace of human tongues and begins to take risks not even Ethan Hunt would. She behaves dangerously; she refuses to carry a weapon. This wickedness fundamentally changes Mary Anne’s personality and her attitude toward life. While she feels that she is finding herself, she is instead losing herself. May Anne loses herself to the jungle and the war. Like a hyperbole of the entire Vietnam era, Mary Anne loses her purpose. Around this time, some might say so did the American Dream. Contributing to the entropy of the American Dream, soldiers felt lost, confused, and in a metaphorical fog. Soldiers stopped thinking of the war as just good and bad, and instead as one of lesser

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