The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Tim O’Brien
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Plot: Impressionistic, frame story
- Time of Work: The 1960's, during the Vietnam War
- Setting: Vietnam and Minnesota
- Principal Characters: Rat Kiley, Mark Fossie, Mary Anne Bell
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Traveling or travelers, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Mental illness, Obsession, Asia or Asians, Violence, Vietnam War, War, Soldiers, Vietnam or Vietnamese people, Minnesota
- Locales: Vietnam, Minnesota
The Story
In “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley, a soldier with a reputation for telling tall tales, claims to have witnessed the transformation of Mary Anne Bell, a typical American girl who visits her fiancé, Mark Fossie, in Vietnam, into a wild jungle beast.
At the start of the story, Rat is in a small medical detachment overlooking a village called Tra Bong and a river called the Song Tra Bong. The area had been a Special Forces outpost, and a squad of Green Berets still bivouacked on the perimeter. The “Greenies” were secretive, antisocial,...
[The entire page is 1671 words long]
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