In Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, the character Mary Anne Bell is introduced and it is very controversial as to what her true representation actually means and if the story of how she ended up is actually a true war story. In this chapter, it shows the full transformation and personification of Vietnamese culture, Mary Anne is the full embracement of that. This chapter also displays how Mark Fossie reacts to finding out that he has lost the love of his life (Mary Anne) but he ignores it. The difference between their experiences sets up a world in which the separate cultures are completely foreign to each other and basically clash. With that being said, it is insinuated that the two cultures cannot combine, it is one extreme or the other.
I believe that some element of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is not a completely true war story, I am also aware that some people have questioned whether Mary Anne is actually a woman or if that was an exaggeration to gain more of the male attention. It can be gathered from “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” that the idea of 'women' as only one-dimensional beings who serve only one purpose, to offer comfort to men. Mary Anne could be the symbol of that dry spell amongst the soldiers, once again being moistened. If you ask me, bringing a woman into a war is just asking for a major distraction and it would be a fantasy to think that the head lieutenant would have no problems with that. It was also very far fetched when Rat Kiley described how she was 'smuggled', very unrealistic. Rat Kiley's reputation also needs to be addressed, he has been known to over exaggerate in the past when telling war stories. One major factor that I cannot wrap my head around, is how she ended up, so many simple questions were left unanswered and a true
war story never ends.
The reason why the soldiers want Kiley to 'get it right' and to tell them how it ends is for two reasons:
1) Endings complete stories and make them 'true.'
2) The men want to subconsciously know how the the 'story' will end for them.
Some parts of the story are believable, like Mark Fossie's protective and sheltering qualities or his extreme love for this girl, but for the most part, the majority of this chapter can be interpreted in many different ways which causes me to become skeptical.
Overall, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is a very attractive and spooky story with a very compelling metaphor. This story is not only about Mary Anne's transformation, it is mostly about the loss of innocence and storytelling. I believe this story has a very encompassing moral(war stories do not have morals), many of the soldiers are represented by Mary Anne because they too, left America young and naive then later were corrupted and lost their innocence in Vietnam. As stated earlier, there is no middle ground so once they cross over to the dark side of the war experience, their innocence is gone forever. At the end when the listeners are craving an ending it is somewhat inscribing their fate, they want to know what happened to Mary Anne so they can be sure that they will not end up stuck on the dark side just like she was.
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