English Notes
January 19, 2015
Review of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”
Homework: Read “Ambush”
1. Rat’s storytelling style:
 Exaggerates
 Uses emphasis, suspense
 Wants the story to sound better/more believable
 Makes the story seem more realistic so the reader/listener feels the emotional impact
How is this important to the novel? This is a work of fiction, Tim is a character, the story-telling
technique makes it seem like this actually happened. Despite the fact that the story is fabricated, it
seems real. Connect this to “How to Tell a True War Story.”
2. Mary Anne:
 Tall
 Blonde
 Bubbly
 In love
 Dressed in a pink sweater, culottes (feminine)
 Blue eyes
 Plans on marrying Mark after the war, having an idyllic life, blonde children
Mary Anne in Vietnam:












Cuts her hair
Doesn’t shower
Becomes evil (ready to kill)
Eyes change to “jungle green”
Unkempt
Eyes seem blank, flat, indifferent, no emotion in her stare
Her innocence has been taken from her (Remember—when she arrived she was
innocent—that’s what the men liked about her since she was innocent like the girls at
home)
Wears a necklace of human tongues
Adapted to being a killer
Adapted to the rules of war and the rules of the jungle
Wanted to be part of the culture, part of war, assisted bloody victims
In the Green Beret tent there is a pile of bones, jungle cat head
Consider the use of the female character. She accentuates what happens to all who experience war.
3.
Rat interrupts his own stories in order to get the full range of meaning across. (He wanted to
bracket the full range of meaning.)
Narrator, Tim O’Brien, interrupts his narration in order to tell Rat’s story.
Tim’s story  Rat’s story  story about Mary Anne’s change in Vietnam
(and this cycles back and forth)
4. It seems against human nature not to tell the end of the story—most of us agree with Sanders.
Mary Anne is in the Vietnam jungle, but we still wonder where.
5.
Ending of the story:
Mary Anne disappears
Green Berets are scared (remember, they trained her)
She becomes part of the landscape of Vietnam
6. Human Nature:
Mary Anne likes the adrenaline rush of the ambush. She has an appetite for Vietnam. We do
not know what happened to her in the end. Although this is a work of fiction, it is true that this
is a story regarding the transformation of identity. War has the potential to transform one’s
identity.
Gender Stereotypes:
 war changes femininity, innocence
 Mary Anne—nice, bubbly, pretty, innocent—she changes once she sees Vietnam
 Her personality evolves—she is curious about the village, Vietnamese culture, tends to
the wounded and bloody victims, assembles an M16
 There is no difference between genders. War changes both men and women.
 Mary Anne—out in the jungle killing, becomes savage—she is capable of brutality
 Human nature—both genders have the capacity for evil, brutality, the ability to kill
“The Man I Killed”












From prior chapters we know that Tim O’Brien killed a man in the war.
Description of dead body—star shaped hole In his eye, a butterfly on his chin, neck open to
spinal cord, bloody, seemed scholarly, wrists of a child, wore ammunition
O’Brien believed that the man he killed was part of a family who struggled for independence in
My Khe. He may have listened to stories about victories defending the land from the French.
this background story about the man he killed is created/speculated
giving this man a backstory humanizes the experience
Body was small and frail.
There was nothing O’Brien could do—he recalls the dead body, star shaped hole in his eye.
Kiowa asks O’Brien if he would like to trade places with the dead man. He is justifying O’Brien’s
actions and the actions of war. He wants O’Brien to stop staring and to go rest.
About the dead soldier: “Even as a boy growing up in the village of My Khe, he had often
worried about this…He had no stomach for violence.” However, he fought in the war out of
shame—he didn’t want to disgrace his family (connect this to O’Brien in the chapter “On the
Rainy River”).
Kiowa reminds O’Brien to “Stop starring.”
O’Brien repeats what the dead body looked like after the grenade was thrown.
Killed man—a scholar, small wrists like a child’s, fell in love with a girl at university, wore a gold
ring on his middle finger, knew that war would finally take him.
Kiowa—says the man was “killed” the minute he stepped on the trail. He tells the others to pull
it together and gives O’Brien a 5 minute warning. Kiowa covered the body with a poncho and
told O’Brien he was sorry. He wants O’Brien to talk about it. (Consider how hard it is to talk
about this. O’Brien can’t believe what just happened.)
At the end of the story Kiowa urges Tim to talk about what happened. In the last paragraph, he
talks, but repeats the same information about what the man he killed looked like.
Discussion of the writing style:
Note the repetition—Tim re-examines what he has done, he refuses to talk, everyone else has moved
on, he is in shock.
Repetition emphasizes the psychological impact.
Star-shaped hole, constellation of possibilities—stars emphasize fate, destiny, dreams.
“Ambush”
This story explains what happened BEFORE “The Man I Killed”



Narrator’s nine-year-old daughter asked if he had ever killed anyone in war. Narrator tells her
“of course not”
Daughter knows her father is in war and that he keeps writing stories—he must have killed
someone.
He writes pretending she’s a grown-up to tell her what happened. She is right—the reason he
writes stories is because he killed someone in war.
Man he killed:



Short, slender, 20
Narrator feared him on the trail
Threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him

Narrator recalls ambush site outside My Khe. Platoon was on the trail for 5 hours and nothing
happened.
There were 3 grenades lined up for quick throwing.
Young man came out of the fog. Had a weapon and ammo, but seemed at ease. Narrator pulled
the pin automatically. He crouched, kept his head low, had no thoughts about killing.
Narrator didn’t think—just threw the grenade
Young man fell on his back—sandals had been blown off. One eye was shut and his other had a
huge star-shaped hole.
Narrator comments that it wasn’t a matter of live or die—he wasn’t in danger when he threw
the grenade. He couldn’t stop and think—he’s trained to kill.
Sometimes the narrator can forgive himself/sometimes he can’t—he sometimes looks up and
sees the young man step out of the morning fog (daydream)






Consider:
Killing becomes automatic.
Effects of killing—narrator still daydreams about the man he killed
Similarities between Tim O’Brien and the killed man—both young, scared, at war out of duty/shame,
both educated (Tim could go to Harvard for grad school and the killed man was a mathematics student),
killed man was weak and almost feminine looking