Going Native

I like to include Tim O'Brien's short story, "The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" when I teach short stories to my 9th graders. "She was crazy!" they say at the end of it.

The story is set during the Vietnam War and is about a soldier named Mark Fossie who figures out a way to bring his girlfriend, Mary Ann, to Vietnam. Mary Ann shows up in a pink sweater and culottes, girlish and subservient to her boyfriend. The other guys in camp like her too, but as days go by she begins to be attracted to the world outside the medical compound. She learns to use weapons and she isn't afraid to get her hands bloody when wounded soldiers are flown in. She chops off her hair, pays no attention to hygiene, stops wearing make-up, loses her "feminine" behaviors (giggling, averting her eyes when men are present) and begins hanging out with the crazy Green Berets whose camp is near the edge of the compound. Mark Fossie loses it when Mary Ann begins to go out on ambush with the "greenies", and attempts to set her straight, but Mary Ann goes off for longer and longer periods of time. She eventually walks away for good. She becomes more crazy than the greenies, blending in with the landscape of Vietnam, more of a risk taker than any of the men in the story.

I like the story because it raises all sorts of questions for student research like, What is the difference between men and women mentally? Are we different because of nature or nurture? What is war really like? What does war do to people? Why don't we let women fight in combat? Why haven't women had the same rights as men in the history of the US? What is the difference between mens' and womens' body language? What was it like for women in the 50's and early 60's? Who decides what clothing women should wear? (I like to tell them about the time I was kicked out of high school when I was their age for wearing culottes.) Are all people in the world basically the same? (A question Mary Ann asked Mark when she wanted to go out of the compound to visit the local village and he was trying to make her understand the danger involved.)

It feels so much like we are regressing back to the 1950's. I don't want to live there. Girls see no connection between abortion and a woman having control over her own body. They are dismissive of feminism and a lot of them have the same attributes as Mary Ann when she arrived in Vietnam. They are so ready to defer to white men.

The white president and his mostly white cabinet don't look all that different than they did in the 50's. Cheney and Rumsfeld are straight out of that era. It's scary. And the majority of people want that.

But I think I like the story mostly because I can relate to Mary Ann, who is ready to walk away, to give up her life, to risk it all. I continually feel the stress of conforming to the place where I was born.

I have forsaken My house,
I have abandoned My inheritance;
I have given the beloved of My soul
Into the land of her enemies.

My inheritance has become to Me
Like a lion in the forest;
She has roared against me;
Therefore I have come to hate her.

Jeremiah 12:7-9