Choose two members of the Alpha
Platoon and discuss their transformation throughout the novel. You should refer
to character traits in your answer: actions, speech, emotional/psychological
state, physical appearance, personality, etc. Provide evidence. You may want to
consider if they have changed for better or worse. Has war affected them
positively or negatively?
Within this novel, Tim O’Brien illustrates to the audience
of the personal development of many of the members of alpha company, though the
two most notable of these characters would be Lt. Jimmy Cross and Mary-Anne
Bell.
To start with, Jimmy Cross, we can see his transformation
from the effects of the war through the story “the things they carried”. In this
short story, we can see how he goes from being just another soldier, doing his
job and just wanting to go home, back to his love, a woman named Martha, and
becomes a leader, emotionless and calculating in his deeds. An example of his
longing for Martha would be that every evening, Cross sits at the bottom of his
foxhole and reads the letters, sometimes touching his tongue to the envelope
flap, knowing her tongue had been there before. He imagines her, and somewhat fantasising
over her, while they “hump” their gear over the tracks and through the jungle.
He is in love with her. However, as the story progresses, this longing is both
a blessing and a curse, as it both draws him through the war and gives him a
reason to go home, but this longing and love eventually leads to his downfall,
in the form of Ted Lavenders death. We can see this as in the minutes precluding
Lavenders death Cross was reading the letters from Martha and imaging her,
while he should have been focusing on his job and scouted the land around them.
This negligence leads to Lavenders death and the guilt that befell and consumed
Cross. In the end, he burned the letters Martha had sent him and had become the
leader he always should have been. He became “realistic about it, there was a
new hardness in his stomach” (page 11), this shows us his new determination he
feels about getting home, and all his men along with him. This development of
character also shows us how, in this instance, war and instinct had won over
innocence and love.
We can also see this development of character through
Mary-Anne Bell and the transformation from innocents into instinct that occurred
in the chapter “Sweet-Heart of the Song Tra Bong”. Within this chapter,
Mary-Anne is introduced as the innocent, shy, ignorant girlfriend of Mark
Fossie, who worked as a Medic in the compound overlooking the river Song Tra
Bong. However, she soon reveals to the men that she is willing to learn about
the war and warfare itself. She had glimpsed the secrets of Vietnam and she
wanted more. She quickly picks up the skills needed to survive in the jungle
and even begins going into the jungle for days at a time with the quiet and
reclusive Green Berets, learning and killing in the dark. The pen-ultimate
moment in which her transformation is revealed to the readers, where it is
shown hoe she has come form innocents is where Mark Fossie busts through the
door into the Green Berets hooch and confronts Mary, where she replies “you are
in a place, where you don’t belong” (page 45, (book 2)). This means that she,
an “innocent” shy woman is more suited to the vast jungles and the dangers of
the war than was her boyfriend Mark Fossie. She had transformed into the
shadows and had become one with Vietnam. It is later revealed that the Green
Berets have seen her walking through the jungle, one with the darkness, with a
necklace of tongues on her neck. This is another example of how war and “evil”
can win over innocence and love. How war is a corrupting influence on the core
psyche of a human being, turning them into their worst fears.