Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

In Tim O’Brien’s “Stockings," the nylon stocking draped as a token of luck from Dobbin’s neck represents a parallel to the significance Mary Ann’s, herself, personifies. Something that brings comfort, and by virtue of its essence, keeps us safe: “…they kept him safe. They helped to justify his need to access to a more spiritual existence, where things were softer and more from .” Dobbins is portrayed as a strong man because of his faith: “Henry Dobbins was a good man, and a superb soldier… a believer in the virtues of simplicity…”. O'Brien outlines the many masculine traits that make-up an ideal soldier, he then goes on to say “Even now, twenty years later, I can see him wrapping his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck before heading out on ambush.”. The stockings were a talisman for him. O’Brien paints a picture in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” of the necessity and essence of femininity that paradoxically and inevitably slips quietly into the masculine. In both instances, the essence of femininity plays an integral role in the
It asserts that soldiers and men have their femininity and innocence inevitably stripped by the brutality of war. Perhaps the most significant quotation is: “The wilderness seemed to draw her in… Seventeen years old. Just a child, blond and innocent, but then weren’t they all?” (105), O’Brien further exemplifies the idea that Mary Anne represents an aspect of the masculine identity reinforcing the innocence and feminine that once existed in them all diminishes and then disappears, just as Mary Anne does. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Ghost Soldiers”, it’s said that: “They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing.” This further emphasizes the discomfort experienced by men, as they realize they all loved Mary Anne along with the notion she was much more than a girl, but rather a vivid, paradoxical representations of