Summary Vs Analysis

The story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien was about soldiers that were in a small medical detachment. The story is being told by Rat Kiley, a soldier that is known to over exaggerate any story that he tells. So when the other soldiers heard about the story some were suspicious if it was the truth. The story was about a soldier named Mark Fossie and coming up with a brilliant idea to bring his girlfriend to the war. “No war here. You could really do it. A pair of solid brass balls, that’s all you’d need” (O’Brien 93). Mark Fossie had it in his head that it was very possible and he would make it happen. On the sixth week his girlfriend Mary Ann Bell showed up. Throughout the rest of the story it tells how in love they seem to be. The discussed that they wanted to be married and start a family. Eventually, Mary Ann started changing, going off at night and coming back in the morning. She became involved with the Greenies, the native Vietnamese people, and was no longer the same girl when she arrived. Mark Fossie became worried and noticed that her stay was way too long and told her that she would have to leave back to the states. Mary Ann refuses to leave. She finally ends up disappearing and a few weeks later she returns. Never going back to see Mark Fossie, she ends up becoming one of the greenies and disappears.
The argument that I was able to come up with for this story was that both Mark Fossie and Mary Ann took the war very differently. Mary Ann being a young girl that was fresh out of school and coming to an environment that is going to be foreign. She adapted to the environment and the Vietnamese culture, she wanted to become more involved. On the other hand Mark Fossie was a soldier and basically sent there to kill. They were the enemy no matter what anyone else said. Another thing that I couldn’t understand at first was the fact that Fossie wanted to bring his girlfriend to an environment like that. I figured out that he wanted comfort, being around men all the time and missing home. He only wanted a piece of home with him, but everything ends up with consequences. Mary Ann becomes one with the land and everything else ends up being gone.

Link: http://www.gazette.com/articles/soldiers-54174-brain-mcclanahan.html