Character Development: Mary Anne

  In Tim O'Brien's collection of war stories, The Things They Carried, he tells the story of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" in this story the character Mary Anne is introduced. This story is told by Rat Kiley who has a "reputation for exaggeration and overstatement,"(O'Brien 85) so it is his own personal truth as to what actually happened with Mary Anne. Anyways, Mary Anne when she first arrive on the base she was this bubbly, "young"(93) girl who found herself entranced by war. Throughout the story, the change and development of Mary Anne from her young self to the Mary Anne who was just the shell of her former self, unrecognizable to her boyfriend, Mark Fossie.

When Mary Anne arrived to the base, she was described as this: "she had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream"(89). All of these adjectives relate back to her naiveté because her "white legs" are blank like a canvas, not yet damaged or scarred by the grotesque nature of war. Her complexion is that of "strawberry ice cream" a childish description, thus relating back to her childish nature. She, like all of the soldiers, was a child still, a mere adolescent, yet she willingly went to a place filled with death.

Throughout the story, Mary Anne's personality and desires change. Rather than just for Mark Fossie, Mary Anne found her own purpose and reason for staying on the base. She started to learn the trade and rather than be afraid of the monstrosities of war, she liked the rush it gave her. As time goes on the Mary Anne everyone knew started to dissolve, but what remained was a war hungry woman. Once Mary Anne found her place with the Greenies, that was it, she was gone for good. Mark Fossie tried multiple times to pull the old Mary Anne out of her, but the war had already changed her. On Mark Fossie's last attempt to reach out to his old flame, the woman he saw was looked like the Mary Anne he once knew, but acted nothing like her. O'Brien writes, "At least for a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier. She was barefoot. She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt"(105). So, this description at least goes along with the Mary Anne that Mark Fossie fell in love with, but when O'Brien continues he states, "her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues"(105). The affect that war had on Mary Anne is definitely apparent through these quotes because from above the quote about her bubbly description to the description of her after being in a war zone for a number of weeks, the overall affect of the war and the development of her character is astounding. She turned into a war-obsessed monster from a young, naive girl.