Mary Anne In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried, many characters leave the reader feeling uneasy and perplexed, but none to the extent of Mary Anne. While she is often portrayed as either a symbol for women’s power as well as for their supposed weakness, Mary Anne’s story is more about the power and intrigue of war on people, and how anyone can be taken in and changed by it. When she arrives in Vietnam, Rat describes her as, “This cute blond--- just a kid, just barely out of high school--- she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags” (86). She arrives in Vietnam as this feminine and impressionable girl, and at first the men even say that she is treating Vietnam like a sort of vacation. The problem, however, is that she is not treating like an exotic getaway. …show more content…
With this, Mary Anne begins to conform less and less with societal expectations. She starts going on ambushes with the Green Berets and begins to stop worrying about her appearance and personal hygiene. Even she and Mark’s shared dream of, “[being] married, and [living] in a fine gingerbread house on Lake Erie, and [having] three healthy yellow haired children”, vanishes (90). She no longer wants nor is able to conform. This lack of ability to conform to society because of experience in war does not just affect Mary Anne, rather, it impacts many troops’ ability to successfully adjust to civilian life. Mary Anne is therefore a symbol of how mind-altering war can be, and how anyone, even an all-American girl like her, can become a victim of the allure of