Question 5

In my opinion, Mary Anne is not really a traitor as much as someone who let herself get way too caught up in the feeling of being in war and in the culture of Vietnam. She showed up to the war being an innocent seventeen year old girl and ended up becoming a killer. Shortly after she arrived, she began to love the feeling of the urgency of war. She also became so curious about everything in Vietnam, and despite the warnings of her boyfriend Mark Fossie, she insisted on learning more about them. It only escalated from there. When Fossie tried to make her return to America and her Western American ways, she only bounced back in the opposite direction even further. She really felt like she belonged there in the war, and being there affected her mind in such a big way. She began to perform odd rituals of the Vietnamese, for example when Fossie ran into the tent she was in and caught her singing what sounded like a song in a foreign language, with a head of a leopard in the corner and a necklace of human tongues hanging around her neck.

A quote from Mary Anne from chapter 9 says, "When I'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark--I'm on fire almost--I'm burning away to nothing--but it doesn't matter because I know exactly where I am." That shows that she truly felt like she belonged there. I don't think it was necessarily her being a traitor, but more of her mind being corrupted by the war.

I defiantly agree with you when you said that Mary Ann got too caught in the feeling of war. I believe that she was also trying to prove herself to the men and for all woman back home in America. However, she still get way to caught up in the war she began singing and got involved in the Vietnamese crafts. She began to wear the tongue neckless which just signifies her want to be apart of the Vietnamese culture but not abandoning her country. Every night she was in charge of the night patrol and the soldiers would not trust Mary Ann if they thought she was a traitor. In fact many of the men describe her as "brave" and "fearless". So, Mary Ann should not be thought of as a traitor but a hero who got to caught up in the culture of Vietnam.