Mary Anne Bell

"The way Rat told it, she came in by helicopter along with the daily resupply shipment out of Chu Lai. A tall, big-boned blond. At best, Rat said, She was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Height Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very friendly, too."

 

This quote provides perfect imagery of what Mary Anne was like when she got to Vietnam. Fossie flew her in to spend time with her right after she had graduated high school. She was curious and wanted to know more about the world especially Vietnam. The quote gives physical appearance clues about her innocence and beauty as a woman. O'Brein portrays her as a beautiful blond, the way woman wer portrayed during the Vietnam War.

 

"She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal."

 

This quote describes Mary Annes transformation beginning. Thos quote came from the part in the book when she had been gone all night with the Green Berets and showed up to the compound the next morning acting as though everyhting was fine and natural and nothing had happened. This was when she started shaping into a tough Vietnam soldier and started becoming a part of the gReen Berets. She is no longer portrayed as the innocent girl who had arrived fresh out of high school. She was now the tough girl who had gone out in ambush with the Greenies. The adrenaline she feels out in ambush and her curiousity to know and experience more of the land is what motivates her to keep going back for more.

 

"For a long while the girl gazed down at Fossie, almost blankly, and in the candlelight her face had the composure of somone perfectly at ease with herself. It took a few seconds, Rat said, to appreciate the full change. In part it was her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girls throat was a necklace of human tongues."

 

Near the end of the chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Mary Anne has pretty much faded into Vietnam. she forgets all about the way she was when she had first arrived and is now so love struck with the land she has forgotten herself and convinced herself  she belongs in Vietnam and now is a piece of it. She starts going crazy with her obsession of the land that she loses sense of humanity hence the human tongues. She is far from normal and completely human like she once was. She feels like she has found peace in Vietnam and in herself as well.

 

"She had crossed to the other side. She was a part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill."

 

At this point Mary Anne has gone insane and is not Mary Anne Bell anymore, she has become a product of the war and the Vietnam jungle. This quote shapes her into a crazy, young girl that has fallen in love with something and can't let it go so she is driven crazy by it and has no way of turning back. Her physical appearance still gives off some of her innocent sides because of the clothes she it weaing but the necklace of human tongues shapes her as a crazy Nam ridden girl that can't seem to get enough. Her curiousity and love for Vietnam pushes her to the brink of insanity and she topples over the edge in her desperation to know more.