Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

Up until the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, we witness many powerful chapters but none to such a caliber as this one. When I began reading this chapter I was both utterly amazed that a soldier could get his girlfriend into such a dangerous and unforgiving war zone such as Vietnam, and skeptical that any of this really ever happened. Based on my knowledge of the Armed Forces of the United States I know that just recently were women allowed to enlist in the military and that to this day women cannot fight in the front lines such as the way Mary Anne did in this chapter. So based on that knowledge I would concur that this is all a fictitious story and that none of this ever happened but as we see as a recurring theme throughout this book, crazy things happen in war and I have no evidence to prove that this story is fake so I must assume that it is true.
In this chapter, a soldier named Mark Fossie is working at a secure location in Vietnam where he is seldom under attack and the environment is relatively safe,writes a letter to his girlfriend and six months later she arrives at the base in Vietnam. We go on to learn that Mary Anne is a very well rounded woman who is  smart, adventurous, pretty, and adored by everyone; but this doesn’t last. After just a few weeks of living at the base Mary Anne begins to change, the changes are subtle at first but they continue to escalate and soon she is heading off on night raids with the Special Forces team and killing people with her bare hands. Mary Anne’s transition to a killer is a baffling one and one that left me thinking for a while. What I finally realized is that Tim O’Brien tells us this story not because he was there or it was important to him, but because it symbolizes how Vietnam changes everyone. We had seen Vietnam change people in previous chapters but never before had we seen someone so innocent become so savage in such a short period of time. I think the important thing that O’Brien wants the reader to take away from this chapter is that no matter who you are, young or old, male or female, Vietnam will change you and there is nothing you can do about it.
Unlike most of the stories in this book which are narrated by Tim O’Brien (A different Tim O’Brien than the author) this one is narrated by Rat Kiley for multiple reasons. First of all, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is one of the only chapters in which Tim is not present for or indirectly a part of, in the whole entire book, and for that reason I believe he has Rat Kiley narrate it so that it could have a more realistic feel to the story. Another reason I believe Tim O’Brien has Rat Kiley tell the story is because unlike most of the other stories in this novel which all seem realistic and have a hint of truth to them, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong seems far fetched and leaves even Tim O’Brien himself skeptical of whether or not this story ever happened. I feel that Rat Kiley did a great job at telling the story and that for the most part his story fits the criteria of a true war story. In the chapter How to Tell a True War Story, O’Brien lays out the basic criteria such as the story might be unbelievable, which this story definitely is, the story might be impossible to tell, which seems to be the case here, and that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true, which we can tell is true about this story. The only reason I believe that this story might not be considered a war story is because in a true war story you shouldn’t be able to separate the moral from the plot, but in this story there is the obvious moral that war changes everyone. This is probably one of the most dramatic chapters of the whole novel and I loved it.