Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

In Response to Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,

In war, societies standards are thrown out the window. What was once known as right and wrong is no longer relevant in war, which has been known to change people, which is exactly what happened to Mary Anne Bell in The Things They Carried.

In the chapter, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, the reader is introduced to Mary Anne Bell, the high school sweetheart of one of the guys in the war. Mary Anne was brought to Vietnam to be with her boyfriend, and when she arrived, the crew noticed something about her. She was the stereotypical female of the time and that's how the enlisted men, especially her boyfriend, saw her. They saw her through society's standards and used that mold to fit her into. As Mary Anne stayed in camp with the men, she began to change. The moment she arrived in camp, Mary Anne was curious. Curious about how things functioned and wanted to be a part of the war. As she stayed, Mary Anne began to change. She was not afraid to work with weapons or get bloody and she was changing and evolving, but her boyfriend still saw her as the perfect mold of societies standards. In the end of the chapter, Mary Anne has evolved to lose her sense of standards, as one does in war.

Mary Anne has been growing up in a place where society's standards and rules were strict and something a person had to follow, and being thrown into a war messed her up. A war does not follow the same rules that society does, and anyone, especially a young adult can be changed by it. Mary Anne was just out of high school by the time she left for Vietnam, just finally given a chance to be her own person and decide what standards to follow, but living in a place where everything she once knew was no longer real caused a dramatic change. This change is something that could happen to anyone, male or female.