Throughout They Things They Carried, O’Brien employs a long list of acronyms commonly used by military personnel during Vietnam (and often today). While it creates a sense of verisimilitude for the reader, they can be rather opaque to a non-military reader, who might need some help deciphering them.
Look up terms on the Glossary of Military Terms and Slang from the Vietnam War site.
In 1998, O’Brien’s story “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” was made into a film starring Keifer Sutherland. However, it’s worth noting that the filmmakers’ interpretation of Mary Anne bears some striking differences to the character we encounter in O’Brien’s story. While some of the differences may seem subtle – for example, when confronted by her boyfriend upon returning from a night ambush with the Green Berets, Mary Anne’s “Don’t say anything” is now more pleading than commanding – they are notable, as they tend to reinforce a more traditional femininity for Mary Anne, despite her enthusiastic, and rather unconventional, conversion to military life in the Vietnam bush in the original story.
Of course, O’Brien’s point – or rather the storyteller Rat Kiley’s “moral” if you will, is clearly stated on page 102:
“She was a girl, that’s all.I mean, if it was a guy, everybody’d say, Hey, no big deal, he got caught up in the Nam shit, he got seduced by the Greenies. See what I mean? You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are. All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president there wouldn’t be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude.”
PART I:
PART II:
PART III:
The Literary Works 