Rat Kiley and Linda

Rat Kiley just lost it like Mary Anne. Not exactly like she did, but pretty close. On page 212, Rat Kiley "took off his boots and socks, laid out his medical kit, doped himself up, and put a round through his foot." The war made everyone crazy, but it seems to have hit O'Brien's friends particularly hard. On another note, it's sad that Linda died so young, but I didn't understand at first why she was connected to Vietnam. It's the same as Ted Lavender. All the men talked about him and told stories after he died. They knew it wouldn't bring him back, but he lived on in a way through the stories. O'Brien wrote this book to pass on stories about Vietnam to younger generations and civilians of his own generation. The stories don't bring his comrades back to life, but they're all honored in the stories. Their experiences live on longer than their lifetimes and O'Brien's through the novel, and that the reason for the book.

I Almost Forgot!

So I totally meant to talk about Mary Anne and her insanity. She's a good example of what the war can do to someone. She arrived in Vietnam as a naive seventeen-year-old whose boyfriend was a soldier. After a while, she started to learn about the war, and she liked it. She got sucked into it to the point that her boyfriend found her with the "Greenies" after a night raid, and "At the girl's neck was a necklace of human tongues" (105). This story was meant to show that the war can take an unlikely person and turn them into a battle-hungry warrior. Mary Anne and Mark never expected her to turn into that person when he arranged for her to live in Vietnam. Crazy things happen in unpredictable situations.