Josie LaMaster
Bagwell/Wells
American Studies Block
Period 1/2
May 22,2018
The Things They Carried
This war struck fear in the ones who had battled its eyes, Tim O’Brien was one of these men and he had wrote about it. When he wrote it wasn't necessarily his experiences but what he seen with different character names and their experiences. The Vietnam War changed people in different way no matter who they were they changed. There are a number of characters in this story that changed by the war.
Mark Fossie had made a request to get his girlfriend Mary Anne Bell to come to Vietnam and stay with him for a little while, he told the guys that, “it was expensive and the logistics had been complicated to set up.”(page 90) They had been sweethearts since grammar school and had plans to get married, have kids, and be buried together. Mary Anne was a, “17 year old girl strait out of high school, with long white legs, blue eyes and a complexion that was …show more content…
She didn’t back off from the ugly cases. Over the next day or two, as more casualties trickled in, she learned how to clip an artery and pump up a plastic splint and shoot in morphine.”(Page 93) Her eyes had a different view about them more focused and her face ven looked different. She began to change more and more little by little, “No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short, and wrapped it in a green bandana.” (Page 94)
She began to fall behind on certain things like her hygiene. Mary Anne had became a part of the war just like one of the soldiers. “Eddie Diamond taught her how to disassemble and M-16,how various parts worked, and from there it was a natural progression to learning how to use the weapon.” (page 94) She now had a later authority about herself more grown up and mature. Her experiences from helping the soldiers made her get this new sense of maturity. Her new found maturity and thoughts brought her to think different about her