Mary Anne, was a very interesting character that Tim O'Brien introduced; She was this young,sweet, innocent,and curious 17-year old girly-girl fresh out of high school. Mary Anne may symbolize the soldiers loss of innocence coming into the war and can become a totally different person. O'Brien states " She was curious about things. During her first days in-country she liked to roam around the compound asking questions." Showing she had a genuine curiosity about everything; She wanted to know what certain things were and how they worked, she wanted to know about the mountains and what lied behind them. War can change a lot about a person, it does not matter if they are men or women and that it can even affect people who are not fighting in it. I think O'brien is saying that women should not do what men do because he is perhaps showing just how drastic war can have an affect on a person.
I think that the story about Mary Anne, is one that can have a different meaning to a person each time they read it. Myself personally she can symbolize many different things the soldiers, how war has an major affect on people not just who are fighting but the people who live in the countries involved in it. War was a fascinating thing…show more content… The more the story continues we see more and more of the changes that Mary Anne is going through. She is slowly becoming one of the guys and her boyfriend Mark Fossie is seeing it also. At first Mark Fossie assumes that she is sleeping with someone but she was not. O'Brien writes "All right, sure, the Greenies; But it is not what Fossies thought. She was not sleeping with any of them. At least not exactly, I mean in a way she was sleeping with all of them more or less except it was not sex, They were just lying together."(pg. 97) Meaning that she was not having sex with any of them she was just lying down on an