Culottes and Tongues: War's Transformative Power

In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien says

The contrast of images in this passage makes them memorable. Clearly, O’Brien dresses Mary Anne Bell in a way that accentuates her femininity. The culottes sound more appropriate for a day at a country club. And, of course, she doesn’t just wear a sweater. It’s a “pink” sweater. The color most associated with the stereotypical girl. However, he then finishes off her ensemble with a token of absolute gruesomeness: the tongues. The outlandish incongruity of her appearance suggests an important point: war changes people. However, maybe this statement is too easy. Maybe O'Brien is saying something more than this generally agreed upon point. After all, look at the character O'Brien has created.

Mary Ann Bell is "an attractive girl [with] terrific legs, a bubbly personality, a happy smile" (90). She comes from a small Ohio town and knows exactly what her future will be: getting married to Mark Fossie and "liv[ing] in a fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie" (90). She is about as far from the stereotypical image of the soldier as one can get.

 

And yet, her transformation makes Rambo look soft. Take, for example, her own description of how she feels when out in the land. She says, "I get scared sometimes--lots of times--but it's not bad. I feel close to myself. . .I'm burning away into nothing. . .I know exactly who I am" (106). This isn't about change. This is about a person who has come into contact with a deeper, darker part of herself. Beneath the suburban girl femininity lurks a being that embraces and thrives on the brutality and violence of war. The fact that she says "close to herself" emphasizes that what she is becoming is not something foreign. Instead, she sees this as a transformation to a truer self.

When he was telling the story, Rat makes the point that the soldiers should not be surprised by Mary Anne's transformation. After all, he argues, it is what happens to them all: they "come over clean and get dirty." I suppose this is true. At the same time, this none of the other soldiers in the unit go quite this far: not Rat, not Fossie, not Eddie Diamond. Rat even says that most of them liked their post because it kept them out of danger. Only Mary Anne found comradeship with the Greenies and their “decayed leopard head” and “stacks of bones” (105). Mary Anne senses how she has been seduced by the war in ways that the other soldiers have not when she tells Fossie, “you’re in a place where you don’t belong” (106). This line can be read in so many ways. Fossie doesn’t belong in the Greenies hooch. Fossie doesn’t belong in Vietnam. Fossie doesn’t belong in the dark, mysterious place that she has found within herself. So, returning to Rat’s statement, I wonder about the degrees of “dirtiness” and why Mary Anne went so much deeper.

I wonder if we all are barely removed from wearing a necklace of tongues.

Witnesses to the Sorrow

I have been watching the documentary Restrepo. The film gives an unprecedented look at the experiences of soldiers deployed in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan: the Korengal Valley.

But the film is not just about maneuvers and strategy. Instead, it gives the viewer a look at how this combat deployment affects the men by interlacing interviews with on the ground footage. It is these interviews that make the film so potent.

These are some powerful statements by Sgt Aron Hijar, and maybe even surprising. Too often, our culture focuses on the soldier as warrior, a man unaffected by the violence swirling around him. But these interviews suggest something different. Like Joseph Robertson in "Germans in the Woods," these men understand that they have witnessed painful events that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. In Robertson's case, although decades had passed since his lethal confrontation with a young German soldier in WWII, he says "I still see him in my dreams, and I don't know how to get him out of my mind." As he chokes out these words, Robertson's voice tells us everything we need to know about the consequences of taking another life.

However, it is not just what they say. It is how they say it. It is their eyes as the speak. What the filmmakers capture before and after each soldier speaks is a mixture of sorrow, uncertainty, resignation, and endurance. The film shows us war and its consequences: a middle distance stare in search of meaning.