Ethan Cantrell Post 3

Analyze a character in your story.  How are they characterized by the author?  What is their role in the story?  What do you think of them?  Why?

I hadn't planned on writing a post in response to this question so soon.  But then the chapter with Mary Anne happened.  I hadn't expected her story to turn out the way it did at all when I started the chapter.  She was initially described as being extremely "innocent" and naive.  The ideal girl the soldiers would think of.  Eventually, however, she began showing an interest in the soldiers, their equipment, and, more importantly, Vietnam.  Over the course of the chapter, Mary Anne becomes increasingly obsessed with Vietnam, taking every opportunity she could get to see more of it, to experience it, to consume the land.  She went off with the Green Berets on their night missions, sometimes being gone for a week or more.  Considering how elite the Green Berets are, we can only assume Mary Anne impressed them enough that she joined them.  The majority of men cannot handle the Green Berets, so the fact that a woman in the 1960s was able to tells us a lot about how Mary Anne changed while in Vietnam.

After finishing the chapter, it occurred to me that the Mary Anne we were introduced to at the beginning of the chapter, the naive, innocent girl, was not the real Mary Anne.  Or perhaps, she was, and the person (was she even a person anymore at the end, or something else?) she became at the end was something new, something that could only have been made in Vietnam.  Either way, it is undeniable that Vietnam changed Mary Anne on a fundamental level.  This quote from her illustrates this: ""Sometimes I want to eat this place.  The whole country-the dirt, the death-I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me.  That's how I feel.  It's like this appetite.  I get scared sometimes-lots of times-but it's not bad.  You know?  I feel close to myself.  When I'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark-I'm on fire almost-I'm burning away into nothing-but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.  You can't feel like that anywhere else" (O'Brien 106).  This also supports my belief that this story would not have been the same if it hadn't been in Vietnam.  You just can't get the same kind of atmosphere. 

I think Mary Anne is a fascinating character, and in one chapter became one of my favorites, for reasons explained above. 

"She had crossed to the other side.  She was part of the land.  She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues.  She was dangerous.  She was ready for the kill" (O'Brien 110).  With that quote in mind, what did Mary Anne become at the end?  And why?