My "Live" Essay.

Barb Pohanish
Professor Cline
English 102
30 November 2010

Comparing Huze and O’Brien

Anyone who has experienced war, has been psychologically affected in some capacity, some more than others. I definitely see similarities between people in these two stories, and how the war has taken a toll on their psyche.
In the play, Private First Class Weems says “Just another shit-hole town we shot up. I swear it’s like clubbing baby seals or something.” (Huze, 13). This statement is “so matter of fact” like it’s nothing for Weems to shoot up a town or club baby seals. This similar attitude was seen in the Green Berets from, “Sweetheart of a Song Tra Bong.” When Rat Kiley and Mark Fossie are searching for Mark’s girlfriend, Mary Anne. As Mark fly’s through the door of the Green Beret’s bunker, he and Rat see stacks of all kinds of bones, and a sign that said: ASSEMBLE YOUR OWN GOOK! FREE SAMPLE KIT!! In addition to the bones there was a decaying head of a black leopard on a post, with strips of yellow-brown skin dangling from overhead rafters. (O’Brien, 110). These Green Berets ate, slept, and lived in this bunker with the vile stench from the decaying body parts, like it’s nothing.
PFC Weems explains; “I can’t even begin to describe the smell. Burning rubber,

metal, and flesh combined to form this scent that…well let’s just say it wasn’t exactly
potpourri.” (Huze, 13). While Rat Kiley and Mark Fossie are inside the Green Berets bunker, they smell two kinds of smells, smoke from incense, and a deeper more powerful stench. Hard to describe. Rat says, “It paralyzed your lungs, thick and numbing, like an animal’s den, a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and the sweet-sour odor of moldering flesh-the stink of the kill.” (O’Brien, 110). PFC Weems, Rat Kiley, and Mark Fossie can’t stand the smell, but the Greenies and Mary Anne don’t seem to mind the smell of decay and death.
PFC Weems explains that he is walking when his ankle rolled, and he almost fell onto a pile of dead hajjis. He catches his balance and looks down to see what had tripped him. He said, “It was a foot. A fucking foot. I picked it up and stared at it. I couldn’t get past it. I was stuck on this foot. There I was, bodies were scattered throughout the streets and it didn’t phase me, but this foot for some reason really fucked me up.” (Huze, 13). Meanwhile PFC Weems is searching for the leg that the foot came from. It’s really important to him, that whomever the foot belonged to got it back. He was anxiously looking for the foot’s owner, moving dead bodies around. PFC Weems said, “It seemed like the right thing to do.” (Huze, 13). He just couldn’t leave until the foot’s owner was found. Meanwhile his sergeant kept yelling at him to catch up with the other guys, as soon as Weems holds up the foot to show everyone, his sergeant walks over and slaps the shit out of him. PFC Weems said, “I dropped the foot and when I did my trance was

broken. I realized how ridiculous I must’ve looked; standing in the middle of a street,
littered with debris and death, holding a goddamn foot.” (Huze, 13). PFC Weems is
trying to do the right thing (in a twisted way) by finding the owner of the foot. Obviously he is not thinking clearly, considering the owner of the foot is most likely dead. He is not collecting “trophies” from people that he has shot or blown up, which is a good thing.
Unlike Mary Anne Bell, the pretty blonde teenager who was flown to Vietnam by her boyfriend, Mark Fossie, Mark wanted to prove to his buddies that if you want something bad enough in Vietnam, you could get it. Mark got it alright, he never imagined that his childhood sweetheart, the girl he planned to marry, would adapt to the war so well. Mary Anne cut her long blonde hair short in which she wrapped in a green bandanna, she also learned to disassemble an M-16, and then learned to shoot it plunking away at cans that she used as targets. She started spending time with the Greenies, going out on ambushes with them at night, which led to days, and then weeks. After being gone for several weeks, she returns with the Green Berets, walking with them to their bunker where she follows them inside. Mark waits all day to talk to her, but she never comes outside of the bunker. During the night Mark and Rat decide to enter the Green Berets bunker, its dark except for a circle of lit candles. Rat said, “Mary Anne walked into the light wearing her pink sweater, white blouse, and cotton skirt. “ She gazed down at Fossie, almost blankly, her eyes, utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of person behind it. But the grotesque part was her jewelry. At the girl’s throat was a

necklace made of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one overlapping the next, the
tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable.” (O’Brien, 110).
Mary Anne Bell was definitely collecting “trophies”. There is a huge difference between PFC Weems and Mary Anne. She was with the Green Berets on their ambushes, did the Greenies do all of the killing of the Vietnamese? Or did Mary Anne help them, since she was proficient at shooting the M-16. Maybe she just came along after the killings and cut their tongues out for her “special necklace”.
What is it that leads people to cross over the line, from mental stability to being unstable? Is it worse when you are in the trenches of war? If serving in the military affects people’s psyche so negatively, maybe there should be more psychological training available, prior to being shipped off to war. PFC Weems who was a trained soldier, had a “matter of fact” attitude, and it’s possible that he needed to think that way to protect himself. Where as, Mary Anne who was not a soldier, shouldn’t have been in Vietnam in the first place. Even though she appeared to adapt and enjoy Vietnam, her experience there really sent her over the edge. PFC Weems was able to go home after fighting in Iraq, but poor Mary Anne was never heard of again.
　
　

　

　
　
　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

Works Cited

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books. 1990. Print.
Huze, Sean. The Sandstorm. Directed by David Fofi. The Elephant Asylum Theater.
     Los Angeles. 2005. Print.