The Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

Study Guide for “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”
1. Rat’s reputation among the men of Alpha Company was of being an exaggerator who frequently overstated the truth. The narrator compares Rat’s storytelling to sharing the experience of a fire, in order to burn his audience and ensure that they would come to the same understanding as him, Rat would embellish his tales. The narrator suggests that his stories be corrected by ‘subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe’ implicating that every word should be taken with a grain of salt. Rat was also thought of as an emotional person who would be captivated in the moment of his stories. In order for him to express himself and his own personal
At first Mary Anne acted like a tourist in Vietnam when she reached the outpost. She asked many questions regarding the war and her surroundings, while continuing to act very sweet to her boyfriend. She interacted with all the soldiers and provided a type of comfort to all the men who were tired of being stationed at the outpost, reminding them of their girls and of the innocence that they were striving to protect. Mary Anne reacted to the trappings of the war with curiosity that led her to join in and help with the action. She was fascinated by the war, the effects it had on the casualties and she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty when trying to help. Instead of backing away and leaving the treatment to the other medical officers, she actually learned how to clip arteries and pump up a plastic splint, which demonstrates the extreme extent of her fascination. It pushed her to become more involved with the war than she had to be. She wasn’t required to be around the casualties and instead of fleeing at the sight of blood and injuries, Mary Anne appeared more drawn to the war in
Mary Anne had been with the Greenies out on an ambush when she stayed out all night. She went out because she felt that staying at the outpost was akin to hiding in a fortress. The fortress had been described earlier as having barbed wire, sandbags, and troops defending the men inside, like protecting a castle. Mary Anne felt that she was not able to experience things properly from within the fortress; she was drawn to the action that was happening out in the middle of the warzone and the accompanying adrenaline rush from being in danger. Mary Anne was described as lacking emotions in her eyes when her boyfriend confronts her in the Greenies’ hootch, exhibiting to the reader that despite being with the Greenies in their hootch and participating in their rituals she still wasn’t alive as she was when she was in the jungle, and she admitted that she felt free as herself only when she was out in the middle of the jungle in the