In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” the animalistic imagery of the hootch and Mary Anne’s rugged outer appearance are used to represent the fake, almost calm exterior image that was presented of the Vietnam War to the public. In the hut, Rat smelled two distinct smells: “There was a topmost scent of joss sticks and incense, like the fumes of some exotic smokehouse, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench. Impossible to describe, Rat said. It paralyzed your lungs” (104-105). The smell of incense was man-made, masking the natural smell in the room. That smell is described as “the stink of the kill” (105). These smells parallel the war. The media was much like the smell of incense, but masked what was truly going on in the streets rather than a …show more content…
It’s an advertisement to buy one's own “gook” (105). Gook is a term of disapproval, meaning a Vietnamese person. This is anything but normal, yet is was presented with a childish advertisement like a simple old lemonade stand, seemingly trying to draw people in. Again, readers see a fake exterior image, shrouding a much different truth. In the war, it seemed as though everything was under control from the outside, but like the sale of the Gook, upon closer inspection one could see that the people of Vietnam were being killed in large numbers. The same situation occurs with Mary Anne’s appearance: “For a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier. She was barefoot. She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt” (105). Mary Anne appeared in her normal clothing and had the same, pretty face. However, she now wore “a necklace of human tongues,” no shoes, and her eyes were “utterly flat and indifferent” (105). Though her external appearance showed that of the same girl, there were noticeable changes. These were just enough so that small pieces of her new character showed