In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” Tim Obrien reveals his characters expectation of femininity and how they change as a young girl transforms, breaking the boundaries between female and male, nature and human, Vietnam and home. He uses the juxtaposition of a harsh war torn place like Vietnam with the softness of a young girl. Rat Kiley’s story then follows the transformation of this girl Marry-Anne while she becomes more like herself and less like who her grade school sweetheart wants her to be. In between Rat Kiely’s story telling you also get to see what the men think of this change and how it shapes their opinion of her and women in general. The men often refer to women as if they are possessions and overly sexualize them in the process …show more content…
“There was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself” (Obrien, 7). She was growing up and was no longer just this bubbly blonde straight out of high school, the men started seeing her as more than just a pretty face. According to Tina Chen “Physical changes parallel Mary Anne’s shift away from America and her embrace of Vietnam” (91). She began to look less like a high schooler and more like one of the soldiers. “No fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark green bandanna” (Obrien, 7). And with her new knowledge came a new surge of authority. “But now there was a new imprecision in the way Marry Anne expressed her thoughts on certain subjects” (Obrien, 8). This caused a drastic dynamic change in her relationship with Mark Fossie. At first he referred to her as an object, “”A cinch, Fossie said, and gazed down at his pretty girlfriend. “Thing is you just got to want it enough” (Obrien, 4). Referring to Mary Anne as an “it” makes her no longer human but an object. Renee Faubion points out that “the phrasing here—underlined by the elliptical slip into “Thing” at the beginning of the sentence—strips Mary Anne of any subjectivity, demoting her to the position of object” (319). But with her new confidence came new authority in her relationship. Fossie no longer made all the choices for her and instead he began “suggesting” things like her going back home. And she declined as her love for Vietnam