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  • Essay / Desertion in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong - 607

    Desertion in Sweetheart of the Song Tra BongThe “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” is a story of many things when viewed from the right perspective. The validity of the story actually has nothing to do with its primary purpose, which is to explain how Vietnam changed the American soldiers who took part in the conflict. O'Brien's goal is to inform his readers of the effect Vietnam had on American GIs. Narrated by Rat Kiley, “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” can be seen as a touching love story; lovers united even during a war. However, the real focus of the story is not love but change and desertion. Kiley tells the story to illustrate how all GIs changed in their experience in Vietnam. The fact that the main character is a woman pushes his point even further. She is the very portrait of a dominant and healthy America; the only thing he's missing is an apple pie. Kiley describes her as "This cute blonde - just a kid, just out of high school - she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags." (O'Brien 90) This girl is the antithesis of what one would expect to find in Vietnam. She is pure and innocent. Throughout her time in Vietnam, she shifts from this image to something very different: she spends less time with her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. Mary Anne hangs out with the Green Berets, very different from the other soldiers. Eventually, she becomes one of them, marking a total transformation: “There was no emotion in her look, no feeling of the person behind it. But what was grotesque, he said, was her jewelry. On the girl's neck was a human necklace. LANGUAGES. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one overlapping the other, the tips curling upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable . (O'Brien 110) Vietnam changed Mary Anne; it forced it to become something as foreign to America as war itself. The “Chérie du Song Tra Bong” is also a story of desertion: desertion of people and customs. Mary Anne abandons her boyfriend and her culture. As she becomes more involved in Vietnam, she becomes more distant from her boyfriend, Fossie. She disappears one night and Fossie is distraught. "'Gone,' said Fossie, 'Rat, listen, she's sleeping with someone.'.