Response #3

Wes Hamilton is a lot like the people in The Things They Carried in a few ways. The characters in the book know each other in the way that they want to know each other. The soldiers can put up a front and hide what they don't want to show. This could be a name or a personal issue that is too embarrassing or dangerous to reveal. I do not have enough information to say if this is an actual representation of what personal interactions take place or not.

O'Brien's message about the female character, Mary Anne, is that some women aren't always what they seem. Mary Anne was a very pretty girl from a small town. She was "dating" Mark Fossie at the time when Fossie brought her to Veitnam. She impressed all of the guys with her looks and intelligence. This is the womanly front we all see when we look at a girl. We see a pretty girl who we don't expect to be gruesome with a tongue necklace. It portrays a type of change war can have on one not expected to be in a war.


O'Brien does a wonderful job on blending the fiction with the nonfiction. Obviously he cannot remember everything that happened in the war and he wants to make the story good and touching to people. The only way someone could make it that relateable to everyone is by making part of it fiction. The line between the two is very blurred but can be noticed by men who were in the war.

The time that passed between the war and when he wrote the book was a considerable amount of time. Some memories could have been shifted and altered to what he believes happened. Some memories could have been so bad that it would be imprinted in his head permanently.
These names weren't known to other soldiers because they used nicknames.

What would you have done if you were Mark Fossie?
If you were one of the greenies, what would you have done about Mary Anne?
If you were in the war, how would you have felt coming home?
Would you have been a protestor to the war?
What would you have done about the war?