War's Psychological Toll in The Things They Carried

Mary Anne Bell and the Loss of Innocence

Mary Anne is significant to The Things They Carried because O'Brien demonstrates how war impacts more than soldiers. In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," Mary Anne is the epitome of the all-American girl. Once she encounters war, however, she becomes obsessed with it. It literally consumes her, and by the end of the story, the girl who arrived in Vietnam is a distant memory. Mary Anne meets the soldiers as a sweet girl dressed in "culottes and this sexy pink sweater" (102). She transforms into a creature that shocks even the hardened soldiers around her.

For example, she goes on outings through the "ville" (109) and learns to shoot an M-16. She also becomes skilled at the "habits of the bush" (110) and quietly disappears with the Green Berets, performing ambushes alongside them. Her old identity becomes a "small, soft shadow" (115) as everyone around her realizes she is the "same person no more" (116–17). The most compelling aspect of her transformation occurs when she says:

Sometimes I want to eat this place. . . . it's like . . . this appetite . . . When I'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark — I'm on fire almost — I'm burning away into nothing — but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am. (121)

The Hypnotic Pull of War

This passage represents a loss of innocence. Mary Anne slips into the dark forest, never to be heard from again. She does not simply go away for a while; she disappears completely. Through her story, O'Brien illustrates the strange, hypnotic effect war has on certain individuals. It is powerful and not to be underestimated.

Emotion and Desensitization in 'Ambush' and 'The Man I Killed'

O'Brien illustrates the wide array of emotions experienced during war through "Ambush" and "The Man I Killed." Emotions and perspectives on war and death change with prolonged exposure to both. In "Ambush," war and death seem almost casual as the speaker describes seeing a young man walking and pulling the pin on a grenade out of fear. He writes, "I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy" (132). The image before him on the trail is something vague, like a part of the morning fog, yet the soldier's instincts engage before he has time to think. He kills the man without fully thinking it through because he was "afraid of something" (131).

In "The Man I Killed," the death of an enemy soldier is suffocating precisely because it is so shocking. To have killed a man is more than the speaker can bear. In "Ambush," things shift as acts of war become automatic, demonstrated when the speaker admits the matter is not a "matter of live or die" (133) — it simply is, with no reason behind it. In "The Man I Killed," nothing is automatic; the speaker is frozen, contemplating the dead man's life. He imagines that the act of fighting "frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher. He hoped that Americans would go away" (125).

The dead man in "Ambush" "would've died anyway" (133), while the dead man in "The Man I Killed" "could not make himself fight" (127). These contrasting portraits reveal the moral weight of taking a life and illustrate how O'Brien complicates readers' assumptions about combat. The paired stories demonstrate that killing can be at once reflexive and psychologically devastating, depending on the degree of awareness the soldier brings to the moment.