Final Paper:

Through the reporter’s eyes and actions in the movie “We Were Soldiers” by Randall Wallace, the stories of Mary Anne in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Rat Kiley in “Night Life” becomes alive. In Tim O’Brien’s book called “The Things They Carried”, these stories showed us that war was terrible and how these soldiers dealt with it day in and day out. Some soldiers carried things everywhere they went, so they can feel that ray of hope that everything was going to be ok and that they were going home in one piece. Or in this case, the reporter carried his camera for the people at home, so that he can tell his and many other soldiers their stories. But other times, the reality of war became too real for them to even handle or even talk about.

In the story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Tim O’Brien portrays a story about a loving, young girl that has met up with her boyfriend at war and later became a figure or a story among the trees and the mountains of Tra Bong. Mary Anne was so curious on what these soldiers did that she became one herself, but in a different way. She started to hang out with the Greenies and going on ambushes because she wanted to “…swallow the whole country-the dirt, the death-I just want to eat it and have it there inside me…When I’m out there at night, I feel close to my body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything…” She wanted to feel that, so it drove her to her insanity. She started to wear fingers, tongues, and other body parts of her victims and tried to justify that it wasn’t bad. She had convinced herself that in order to feel close to herself, her victims, and the land she must wear the body parts of her victims. It became her own “…powerful drug: that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure that comes as needle slips…she wanted more, she wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and after a time the wanting became needing, which turned then to a craving.” She had become an animal. Along with Mary Anne, Rat Kiley begun to change in so many ways as a result of the war.

The gore and so much death caused Rat Kiley to lose it. In the story “Night Life”, he began to talk about him seeing bugs that were mutants coming for him and whispering his name; he developed a habit of scratching his arms and picking the scabs and scratching the open sores, and he began to see how his friends and him would look dead. I guess because of Rat being a medic and seeing all these dead bodies day in and day out, it were bound to happen. Even soldiers have a limit on what they can handle and that was the limit for Rat. He couldn’t face war anymore. War was altering his mind and his personality and he wanted it to stop. So, he doped himself up and shot himself in the foot.

I believe that the reporter in the movie “We Were Soldiers” resembled Mary Anne and Rat Kiley. Although he wasn’t a soldier just like Mary Anne, he became one just by living with them and suffering with them. Originally, the reporter went to Vietnam to get pictures to tell the story of the soldier’s struggles and suffering. Throughout him being there, he met friends and took pictures. But eventually he started to pick up a gun to protect himself. After he saw his new friend get burned and his skin coming off, I think that was his turning point. He didn’t go crazy like Rat Kiley, but it drove him to do what he came to do in the first place. His purpose for being there in the first place started to have meaning that didnt happen before. The deaths and the suffering became his motivation to get home and to tell his story. But, all in the end he didn’t know or how to tell his or the others story. He had turned his back towards his fellow colleagues because they had no clue on what it was like in Vietnam. They could of ask him how it was, however it would of been just words. Nothing in the world could even express what had happen to him and others. That is why at the end of the movie when his colleagues came over to take pictures of their own and had asked what is wrong with him, he had nothing to say; there was too much to tell.

A TRUE WAR STORY

War impacts our visions of art through its intensity. Pain and suffering help to create beautiful art. In order for an audience to feel the intensity, it must be shown or told in just the right way. When the artist knows its subject well, especially through first hand experience, he can sometimes, given the talent, make his audience feel the feelings that he felt. The audience can walk away with a better understanding of something that they otherwise would never have the benefit of knowing. Tim O'Brien, in his book, The Things They Carried; and Randall Wallace, in his movie, "We Were Soldiers," were able to penetrate some of these feelings to their audience. The focus here, is how to tell it. In the chapters, "How To Tell a True War Story" and "Good Form," this subject is discussed in detail. At the end of the movie, the journalist agonizes over how to tell his story. They both translated their extraordinary experience to the audience. They accomplish this through their intricate details that are grotesque, gory and bizarre.

In "How To Tell a True War Story," Tim O'Brien says that a true war story doesn't deal with proper human behavior, morality, or leaving the audience uplifted. In fact, he says that a true war story is obscene and evil. He says it makes the stomach believe, it doesn't even have to make a point. It is, he says about love, memories and sorrow. In "Good Form,' O'Brien says, "I want you to feel the way I felt." He says that sometimes "story-truth" is more truthful than "Happening-truth."
He says that through his stories, he can see things he never saw and he can feel again. The details that O'Brien uses, makes his audience feel exactly what he wants them to feel. For instance, he writes, "In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts just hung there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must've been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing "Lemon Tree" as we threw down the parts." This quote has gory detail, but more than the detail, is Jensen singing "Lemon Tree." I think that is the perverse kind of detail that makes you feel it in the stomach and to need to think about it.

In the movie "We Were Soldiers," the reporter was in Vietnam just to cover the story; What he did was live his story. The closer we are to things, the more real they become, and that's what happened to the reporter. His story became so real, and still he didn't know just how to tell it. Anyone can just relay information, accounts of what exactly happened, but he needed to do more than that and what he did was tell the story for the many men who died along side him. He conveyed a message of guilt, loss and intensity that he felt so deeply that he would never be the same. He would never forget. Maybe that's what an artist needs to do, make their audience feel so deeply that they never forget and they themselves are never quite the same. Wallace shows us detail that is unforgettable in the face of the reporter and the colonel when they speak of telling this story. They are dirty and beat up and choking back sobs. He shows us the extent of the horror when he shows the reporter trying to drag off a man who was badly burned. When he grabbed him by the ankles, his skin all pulled right off the bone, and still the reporter got him to the chopper. He shows us huge piles of dead soldiers. These things have an impact on the audience. They are incredibly unforgettable. The movie ends with the reporter typing "We who have seen war will never stop seeing, in the silence of the night we will always hear the screams, for we were soldiers." As he types, he can't keep from crying. So, in the movie, it's the scenes, the acting and the attention to gory detail, the sounds of the choppers, the explosions, and the machine guns, along with haunting music that makes the audience feel deeply.