Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

                What transformed Mary Anne into a killer was her curiosity. She wanted to learn more about the war and experience more about the war, and at the same time the environment she was living in also rubbed on her. Not only did she start learning from the soldiers, but she learned from Vietnam itself, and slowly started being consumed into a different life. It didn’t matter that Mary Anne was a woman because the story itself shows that the effects of war on women are the same as men. The difference was that the soldiers were forced against their will to be in such horrible place, but Mary Anne could have said no to Fossie. Because she was there for a different reason, Mary Anne was standing in a different position to that of the soldiers, but the effect of the war turned out to be the same. There can be different levels of this effect, but it’s not like it will only change men. Mary Anne arrives being the innocent American girl and gets transformed into a killer, just like when the soldiers arrive as boys and get changed into something different than their old selves. This story shows how the war can affect anyone who has been touched by it, regardless of their gender and their involvement in it.

                O’Brien lets Rat Kiley narrate the story because it doesn’t matter if the facts are what’s true, what matters is if the message and feelings the story teller is trying to communicate is true. The way Kiley tells it might not entirely fit into O’Brien’s criteria for telling a war story because Kiley does break the flow of it to insert his own interpretations of it, but in the end the message is what he was trying to get to: war is war, once you’re touched by it there’s no going back, whether you are a girl or a boy, afraid or curious.

Spin

“All that peace man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.”

                I think what this means is that while the soldier was in AWOL (Absence Without Leave) he was at peace. Hitting it on with a nurse and getting everything he wanted. He thought he knew peace, but once he came back to the war ready for combat he realized it wasn’t really peace. It wasn’t peace while his mates were out there in the war, possibly getting killed while he knew that it wasn’t fair. Peace is freedom from disturbance, and while his body was resting, his mind wasn’t. The peace he felt then wasn’t really there. Back in the battlefield wasn’t peace either because it was still war, there was still fear and pain and grief. Peace then would be defined as something that has absence of conflicts, but there can be conflicts within the mind while not physically, so then peace would practically be nonexistent. It only comes with death because both your mind and body are now free from everything; every wound, every thought, every conflict is now lost into death. I think this relates to the war in the sense that it changes the soldier’s perspective of peace, because they gain a new definition for it. They realize that peace is something harder to achieve than they thought, and that peace could also be war’s greatest lie. Because war brings death and death eventually brings peace, but post-war or out-of-war life isn’t the same as death. Post-war or out-of-war life could be the farthest thing from peace, because while your body isn’t at war, all those things you went through, all those feelings, wounds, and horrible sights will be engraved in your heart and mind. I think that what O’Brien could be saying about the war is that once you see it and you experience it, the rest of your life will never be the same and what you thought was peace before was a lie, and you’ll want to hurt that lie back.

War Letter

Dear Mother,

Things have been going rather normal since I last wrote to you, but then again, the definition of normal changes frequently around here. We’ve been marching for quite a long way and I no longer feel the pain on my feet. The sun has made my skin a darker color and a rougher texture, and I could do with a little rain. Walking through mined fields and evading getting shot has now become part of the daily life routine, and I’ve become used to the in-war environment. I have to tell you, Mother, it is a whole different world out here, not to set you off or anything but I admit my stomach has had quite a hard time growing used to the stuff you see around here. It’s mostly the shock and reality of it what’s so new, it just doesn’t feel like real life. You’d think it was a movie.

Anyway, the mates back here are all very nice and we share stories from back home, some are friendlier than others but everyone has got their own charm. You’ve got the funny one, the big strong one, the cynical one, the friendly one, the annoying one, and the surprisingly energetic one. We share the burden of carrying the heavy tech and watch out for each others’ backs. I’ve become well acquainted with Zach, a 20 year-old from Texas, and Paul, a 21 year-old from Arizona. Most of us have got a special item that we carry with us, just like I’ve got that handmade bracelet you gave to me when I was five, the chaps here have their own lucky charms. Zach, for example, has got a small yarn ball his younger sister sent to him.

I’d love to tell you that everything is going calm here, but you’d know I’d be lying. About three days ago we encountered a small group of mercenaries walking out and about the outskirts of a small town. At first we were ordered to keep a low profile and wait for the right time to attack but Zach panicked. He fired all too quickly and we had to back him up. Later on, for safety, we searched the village for any other signs of hostile activity.

But enough about war, I know it sets you off. There’s nothing much new to tell, though, and so I wait for your reply and you can tell me how everything is back home. Tell me about your latest days, what you’ve been up to and all sorts of town business. Tell Dad I love him, and to keep out of my room, when I come back I want everything how I left it. I love you and miss you terribly.

Take care,

Juli

             

  I chose to write to my mom because she is the closest member of my family, she’s always been there for me and we share a very strong bond. I always go back to her for advice and for comfort, so it would be very weird for me not to write to her if I were in such situation. I would tell her the truth about things, she knows very well when I lie, but I’d only talk about what she would ask. I wouldn’t tell her all about how I’ve been around shooting civilians and burning down towns for her sake; I know she wouldn’t take it. In a way, I also wouldn’t want her to think of me as a killer, although I’d be at war which obviously means that at some point I’d have to kill someone, it’s better to not say it. We would both know what I’d done, but not saying it directly makes it better. In this letter I have hidden the fact that the whole town was trashed and burned down. She doesn’t need to know that, and like I said before, I wouldn’t want her to think of me as a killer of innocent people. I also didn’t tell her Zach was wounded in the middle of his panic shooting and that because of this, we were ordered to fire at will. I wouldn’t tell her about how one of our soldiers got blown off by a mine, and I certainly wouldn’t tell her about the blisters and wounds that covered my body because it would hurt her more than what it would hurt me. So while I wouldn’t lie to her, I wouldn’t tell her stuff she didn’t need to know, unless she asked particularly about something.

The Things I Carry

The things I carry in my backpack are all vital for my everyday life at school: textbooks, notebooks, pencils, pens, P.E. clothes, deodorant, a calculator, my lunch, my headphones and iPod, a stormtrooper keychain, and a Yale University keychain. As eerie as it may seem the keychains, headphones, and iPod fall into the category of vitality because of what they mean to me and what I’d be without them.

The iPod and headphones go with me because music makes up a great portion of my life. Whether I’m sitting in the bus, laying in bed, or doing my homework music has the ability to open my imagination and turn whatever it is that I’m doing into something extraordinary. Snow Patrol can suddenly make my homework into a sad and melancholic situation, Pink Floyd make running a heroic and dead-or-alive act, and AC/DC even make my lunch a very rebellious one. Music is what gets me through any mood and works as a escape route to the world of my favorite bands; a world full of jazzy bass riffs, heavy drumming, hypnotizing guitar solos, and unparalleled vocal abilities. So I choose to “hump” my iPod because it’s my portal to this world, without music my world would not be the same, and surely I wouldn’t be the same. Music is like freedom to me, with it I feel unstoppable.

I carry the keychains with me because they both are a small piece of each of my brothers, Justo (Tito) and Juan Felipe (Pipe). Being the youngest in the family has its advantages, but it also means that eventually you’ll be left without the company of your brothers once they go off to college. I’ve always said that when I was born, it was as if Pipe and Tito were handed a blank block of clay and they began molding me into who I am today; a combination of them both. Because of this, I felt that when they left they took a small piece of me with them, but the keychains they each have given to somewhat replace that gap. Tito gave me a small tiger with a Yale University t-shirt on it the first Christmas we spent together after he’d left for college. He knew a keychain didn’t seem as much of a present, but he still wanted me to carry the one thing that would always remind me of him instantly. Pipe gave me a stormtrooper keychain in the summer of 2011 before he started his senior year at high school. We both knew that although there was no telling which college he was going to yet, he was still not going to stay in Panama while I did. The idea of the stormtrooper came from the days when we used to watch Star Wars together and play Star Wars Battlefront, laughing about how incompetent the enemy soldiers were compared to us. I “hump” these items as if I were “humping” part of my brothers with me, carrying the massive weight of old memories, unconditional love, and their company in the small weight of two keychains strapped to my school backpack.

The Vietnam War

Knowing almost nothing about the Vietnam War and even being unsure about my information about it made the discussions during class very enlightening for me. I only knew for a fact that the war was fought in Vietnam and that the U.S. was involved in it, but I had no idea about what went on during this period of time and its repercussions.

I learned about the division of a non-communist South Vietnam and a communist North Vietnam, and how eventually the North used the National Liberation Front (Vietcong) as a weapon to oppose the South Vietnamese government. The U.S.’s involvement began when they started sending troops to support the non-communist South and their presence escalated progressively throughout the years. What struck me the most about this war was the fact that the Vietnam War was the first televised war. This caused distress among some Americans which led to an opposition towards the war. Students also opposed the war because those who were drafted to go to war could not have the chance to go to college. It was very astonishing for me to find out that some of those who were drafted fled to Canada, and others who made the decision of fighting in the war did it out of fear of disappointing their families. I wasn’t expecting the involuntary soldiers to be so genuinely repelled by this war to even try to injure themselves in order to return home.

I was also oblivious to the fact that the U.S. didn’t actually win the war. American President Nixon announced the withdrawal of the troops and by March 29 all soldiers were expected to be out of Vietnam. Those soldiers who returned home weren’t exactly venerated as heroes, and later on, North Vietnam invaded the South and gained control over the full country. I know understand the general confusion and disagreement from some people, and why this war was so important to the U.S. and Vietnam.