Chapter 9

"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" 

Important Sections of the Chapter

1). "...'Young, that's all I said. Like you and me. A girl, that's the only difference, and I'll tell you something: it didn't amount to jack. I mean, when we first got here - all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne'..." (pg. 97)

ANALYSIS

This vignette talks about the loss of innocence. In it, O'Brien reveals the impact that war has on soldiers; it changes them. He states that when "they first got here" referring to when the men entered war, they were still innocent and naive, full of dreams and hopes for the future, or as the narrator calls it, "full of romantic bullshit". 

However, O'Brien emphasizes that they "learned pretty damn quick", which suggests that it was the cruelty of war, the deaths, the darkness, the dirt, the blood and the killing, what changed them, what made them hard and impassive and evaporated the innocence that had made them so pure, all throughout their lives.

The inclusion of the words "young" followed by "girl" symbolize the fact that the author wants the reader to understand that Mary Anne was the personification of innocence for the soldiers. She was their connection with their lives before the war, and the fact that she was a girl, signifies the tenderness and the softness that the soldiers had lost because of all the memories and moments lived at war. Nevertheless, the concluding phrase "and so did Mary Anne" suggests that no matter how innocent or uncorrupt one is, when in war they are still taken and transformed into a bestial individual.   

2). "Quietly then, she stepped out of the shadows. At least for a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier...She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt...It took a few seconds, Rat said, to appreciate the full change. In part it was 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." (pg. 110)

ANALYSIS 

In this quote, the narrator deepens into Mary Anne's transformation by making a crude comparison between innocence and reality. The fact that the girl is still wearing her "pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt" suggests that there was still a part of her that held on to the innocence, to the sweetness with which she had come to the war. However, the fact that her eyes were now "utterly flat and indifferent" and at her throat there was "a necklace of human tongues" explains how war has corrupted her. 

O'Brien intends to make the reader realize that war transforms the innocence of a human being and converts him or her into a bestial character, one that has been exposed so crudely to the truth of war, "war is a bitch", that he has adopted a manner of adaptation to it in the only way he knows: blend and unite.  

3). "...'We all did. The way she looked, Mary Anne made you think about those girls back home, how clean and innocent they all are, how they'll never understand any of this, not in a billion years.." (pg. 113) 

ANALYSIS

Ignorance is what here, is discussed. The narrator, once again, talks about the change produced on a human because of war. However, O'Brien gives it a twist. He shows us how erroneous and ignorant people uninvolved in a war are. 

The fact that Mary Anne is compared to "those girls back home" suggests that there are two realities in the life of a soldier: the war reality and the home reality. In both, they participate, but while one is all sweetness, tenderness, innocence and ignorance, the other is cruelty, darkness and death. 

The essence of this fragment is making the reader understand that one cannot expect to comprehend another human being when he or she has not yet experienced the same situation as the person has. 

4). "What happened to her, Rat said, was what happened to all of them. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterward it's never the same." (pg. 114)

This quote summarizes the point of the chapter: loss of innocence through war. O'Brien crudely states the true effect of war on an individual and how it corrupts him to the point when there is a complete detachment from the person who he once was and the person he is now.

The use of the word "never" merely emphasizes that the effect of war is everlasting and that the memories of it will always remain in the minds of those who lived it, in the form of stories that will consolate whenever there is a sense of loneliness in life. In the context of the chapter, the expression "you get dirty" suggests that as a soldier you are exposed to the burden of taking the life away from a human, of lighting up a fire, of killing an innocent. You are exposed to the fear of dying, of not being quick enough in firing your shotgun, and you are exposed to the fear of becoming a ferocious creature like Mary Anne, one with no soul or heart but only hardness and sorrow.