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| Song Tra Bong, Vietnam. by tbuteaug2 |
Ask any woman who has not yet had the pleasure of giving birth naturally and without any anesthesia how she felt in the process of the labor and she probably would say, “It was the most wonderful moment in my life.” However, asking the same question to those who felt every little detail –the pain, kicks, anxiety, desperation, angriness, and, by the same moment, love, passion, faith, appreciation, and power, the answer would be almost inexplicable; difficult to articulate. In Tim O’Brien’s story, The Things They Carried, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the main character, Mary Anne Bell, found herself at the climax of finding the woman in her, and leaving the girl behind. Similar to those women having birth without anesthesia, Ms. Bell could not well-articulate her statements about all her emotions, even when she never felt more awake –fully conscious than she was the day she encountered herself, near to the Song Tra Bong.
“You just don’t know,” Mary Anne Bell said after seeing the confused expression of her fiancé, Mark Fossie. After nearly three weeks without hearing from her, Fossie found her inside of the Green Berets hootch. Standing barefoot in front of him, and wearing human tongues as jewelry, she continued, “You hide in this little fortress, behind wire and sandbags, and you don’t know what it’s all about.” Picturing Ms. Bell adding the adjective “little” is like watching a lion roar in front of a lizard. The sarcasm, the cruelty of her tone, her soundless laughs hiding behind the little “little,” made Fossie insignificant. She was in charge –for sure. She put away her innocence, her charming next-door-girl appearance and all the American-dream-girl behind. Ms. Bell was no longer the person that Fossie met in Cleveland Heights, Oh, and she had no intentions of going back. This time she had nothing to lose; this time she was fully awake, while her fiancé was still dreaming away.
The picture-perfect couple: Mary Anne Bell and Mark Fossie from Cleveland Heights, OH. They had been lovers since sixth grade and had planned their life together since then. Ms. Bell was a beautiful-blond-tall-sweet 17-year-old girl. On the other hand, her fiancé, Fossie, was an 18-year-old handsome-blond, tall, polite, and a good-heart medic, working at the top of a flat-crested hill of Tra Bong, Vietnam. Like most men living miles away apart from their lovers, Fossie felt the urge to be with his beloved one. Consequently, he managed to fly her in. Once she arrived, he put his arm around his possession –his own doll, and presented her to the crew. They were very in love; always holding hands, laughing of their own private jokes, and even planning how many kids they should have. In addition, their way of showing their sweetest love to each other could give diabetes to anyone.
So far, we could say Fossie is in charge. He has his girl by his side, and a good job position in a safe zone where the war could not reach them; it was a dream come true –what else could he ask for? However, not every love story ends with “They lived happily ever after.” Soon, Ms. Bell became curious about her surrounding: the villagers and their culture, the medical equipment and procedures, and artilleries that soldiers use. It was like seeing a baby crawling and suddenly running away. Fossie, on the other hand, was not paying attention; he was standing in front of his sweetheart, seeing her, yet, not deeply observing what was going on. He was not realizing her sweetness was becoming sour.
There are many ways a person could see without observing. For instance, on a common day of a college student we could see several sleepwalking zombies and marching robots in –what it seems to be their curious routine: walking with their head down using their smartphone, going straight to the classroom, opening their backpack, removing the notebook and/or handouts, letting the body be attached to a chair while their mind at who-knows where. They hear the teacher teaching while they keep using their phone in-between. Closing their backpacks, walking out the classroom with the cellphone in their hands, and repeating the same process on their way back. Perchance, some of those students might not fail by the end of the semester, yet, for most of them, it is a totally different story if they do not open their eye on time.
Likewise, there are students who do not care if their grades are going down; like Ms. Bell told Fossie, “You just don’t know.” They just do not get it. They are just too comfy in their safe zone with non-expectations, or self-governing; just following the group but not themselves –like living in a social-coma. For instance, in John Updike’s “A & P,” the character, Stokesie is similar to Fossie from Tim O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” Stokesie is a young hard-working man, who apparently has to work to support his family. On the same hand, Fossie is a young hard-working medic, who apparently has to work to support his country. Both of them have a motive, they have hero material; nonetheless, they seem to be comfortable with what they do –nothing more, nothing less.
On the other hand, Sammy, from Updike’s “A & P,” is a more-realistic male version of Ms. Bell (O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”). Sammy was a cashier in a grocery store in the north of Boston; similar to Ms. Bell, he was curious and very meticulous. Sammy was spending his time by naming customers for fun, like his friend used to do as well. Although Sammy was trying to figure out the customers –why they buy the stuffs they buy, why they have to walk in circles, he was more interested in one particular girl who he named his “Queenie.” Sammy was following his same safe routine until he had sudden presence of how rude his boss, Lengel, was to his dream-girl –who was in front of him, looking vulnerable, humble, and just real to him, he realized that he had been acting immature and that had to be ended.
Lengel assumed that Sammy’s Queenie was not decent because of her walking around the grocery market in a bathing suit. Sammy stopped looking at her like he used to do; now he was observing her with shame. She was blushing –perhaps embarrassed, and Sammy did not like it; thus, he quit. In addition, he opened his eyes. He spoke; he made Lengel knows that embarrassing a girl was not a good option to do. Moreover, He made his point clear and stood on it with responsibility and no regrets, and that is being mature.
On the same hand, Ms. Bell experienced a similar situation, still, in a different lap of time. When she spent the night hunting –or doing who-knows-what with a standard M-16 automatic assault rifle, and came back by the morning, Ms. Bell told Fossie that she did not want to talk about it. However, after Fossie whispered something to her, he raised his voice, and told her, “Not later! Now!.” This new Fossie made her realized she was not the same anymore. Several days went by on Ms. Bell’s process of waking up; in the meanwhile, she would not speak at all. She disappeared inside herself, and her blue eyes were opaque. She was like a caterpillar inside her cocoon. Figuring out herself; she no longer wanted to be the beautiful American-girl who was supposed to marry the handsome medic. She did not want to have children, or live in a suburban house. Moreover, her pretty-pink-bubble was about to shatter. At last, the caterpillar became a free butterfly. She escaped; gone with the Green Berets.
Fossie might have been an excellent partner; however, he failed to read between the lines. Perhaps, he did not want her to go after the Green Berets because he wanted to protect her from the rumors of them being acting strange or the possibility of abusing drugs. However, Fossie was not clear. After nearly three weeks of her strange disappearance, Ms. Bell had been seen along with the Green Berets walking around like shadows. Fossie did not give-up on her. Moreover, he went to the Special Forces area and found her inside of their hootch. She stepped out of the shadows looking like she was before –for a moment. She wore a pink sweater and a white blouse and a cotton skirt. Nevertheless, the more she came close to Fossie, the more he witnessed her change.
“There’s no sense talking,” Ms. Bell said to Fossie, but this time she was not the girl that hushed and obeyed like the day Fossie yelled at her. Now, it was her turn to speak up. “You are in a place where you don’t belong,” she said. Then, began to explain to Fossie what she thought would be a simple meaning for him to swallow. First, she underestimated him by saying that he did not know about the hill, the villages, and its mysteries because he was just safe inside his fortress, isolated from the reality. Next, Ms. Bell expanded her argumentation by cutting her point of view in pieces, “Sometimes I want to eat this place…the dirt, the death –I just want to eat it and have it inside me.” When something is too difficult to be explained, we ought to divide into details and expand them little by little.
“It’s not bad. You know?” said Ms. Bell. She knew Fossie would not understand her behavior –even when any person would not understand (or really do not want to understand) why she had to wear a human-tongues necklace –perchance making her look in control, strong, or someone we should be afraid of. Back to her development, Ms. Bell was happy of becoming mature and self-confidence; she carried on by saying, “I feel close to myself…I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my 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.” Ms. Bell said, and then concluded by saying that Fossie could not feel like that anywhere else. “It doesn’t matter because I know exactly who I am.”
Likewise, Sammy’s experience of maturity was pretty much the same by the moment he quit his job. “I know you don’t, but I do,” said Sammy to his boss, Lengel, before he passed the front door of the grocery store to never coming back as an employee. He knew about the consequences of his actions and he knew the world was going to be hard for him; however, he did not turn back. He held still and acted like a grownup man. Just like Ms. Bell, Sammy started to think, speak, and act for his own; free at last, finally awake.
When life put us in any difficult or tough situation, for instance, getting low grades at school, quitting a job, or no having a job at all –you name it, it is just to push us to a limit where we have to make a choice. We could choose the easy path –which involves laziness, boredom, and the feeling of walking asleep on the streets, or we could choose to stop for an instant of inner-peace –even if the situation might feel like caving in on us. And then, at that moment with ourselves we might think what would be the best for us, for our future.
When a woman is delivering a child without anesthesia, all the pain and the thrill, is nearly the sensation that someone might feel when she is becoming mature, and waking up from a social-coma. Mary Anne Bell felt that way, she stepped up and shined. She knew something could be considered bad for the society; still, she maintained her point of view and was willing to prove at any cost. Even when the words might not have wrapped all of her emotions, she felt happy with herself. Ms. Bell knew there was something more to be conquered, thus, she became secure, optimistic, and mature; she was fully awake–Are we?
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