Before I start, I will say that I'm not sure if this fell within the section of the book we were supposed to read for this post or if it was later; personally this is my favorite story and I have been itching to write about it since reading it, and I can't wait any longer. So, here we go.
Is Mary Anne Bell a symbol, and if so, what does she represent? What was the point of her story?
Her story is probably the most concrete symbol in regards to the loss of innocence, which is a topic that has repeatedly come up probably more than anything else in our discussion of the novel.
She comes in as a green girl, young, with now idea about what things are like (eventually, she goes from being a green, naïve girl to a member of the green berets, a "greenie"). She sees the village, she learns how to help with the saving of troops rushed in, she goes from being soft to being more of a soldier than arguably any of the other medics. This, of course, represents an obvious example of the transformation. However, there are other facets of her that reveal the loss or the twisting of her humanity. The loss is most obvious in the fact that she altogether disappears; she becomes one with the land, a ghost, more like an animal than a human being. But the twisting is rather more interesting. She sings to the "greenies" in their hooch, to songs in a foreign language in a haunting, ghostly atmosphere, a twist in the normal trope of the bright eyed and bushy-tailed performer/starlet. She wears a necklace made of human tongues (whereas jewelry normally represents a wealth, a refined, cultured status, it is the obvious here that is not the case); I find the fact that they are tongues to be important because it is the opposite of Jimmy Cross' love interest. She is a poet, who uses words to create art. Mary Anne takes the anatomical bits that create poetry and turns them into a war trophy.
Lastly, the period when she first goes away for a few days and comes back and her fiancé tries to make everything normal again. Everything looks perfect but there is something tense and fractured about it, and nothing is alright below the surface. It is like when someone first comes home from war, trying to assimilate with normal humanity, but the feat is impossible.
I hadn't thought about Mary Anne's story being a loss of innocence one, but you make it clear that that's what O'Brien intended it for. The transformation in not only her appearance, but also her mental state from the time of her arrival to the end of the story is significant. I also think that that there was an underlying message about how the war changed people on a deeper level. Although Mary Anne seems to be an extreme example. Your post does a good job of juxtaposing her before and after her time in Vietnam, and clearly illustrates Mary Anne's loss of innocence.
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