Seduction in War Stories

Often in O’Brien’s writing, the theme of Seduction consistently arises. We see it perhaps most obviously with the story of Mary Anne in the “Sweet Heart of Song Tra Bong.” Mary Anne’s attraction to the lifestyle of the Green Berets and the natives near the camp ultimately brings her to turn away from Fossie’s expectations - choosing instead to submit to the alluring enchantment of the Vietnamese jungle. Rat Kiley’s observation of Mary Anne’s change is right on point when he sees her come back from the jungle:

“This Mary Anne wasn’t no virgin…I saw those eyes of hers. I saw how she wasn’t the same person no more. I mean if it was a guy, everybody’d say, Hey no big deal, he got seduced by the Greenies. See what I mean? ”

So for many of O’Brien’s stories, the jungle becomes a seductress of sorts; drawing people in and changing them as in the case of the six man patrol that climbs into the mountains only to hear sounds of music and laughter each night until the order is called to have ordinances dropped all over the place.

The jungle however, is not the only thing beguiling the soldiers into madness. O’Brien, in “The Man I Killed,” finds himself drawn towards the young person whom he shot in the head. His attraction to the scene seems to be part guilt and part awe for the aesthetic of war - like tracer rounds zipping across dark valleys or, in his case, the transformation of an eye wound on a dead man. O’Brien’s fascination and grief for the dead man is paralyzing. His description of the wound he gives reflects his amazement at the sight:

“The star-shaped hole was red and yellow. The yellow part seemed to be getting wider, spreading out at the center of the star.”

Likening a gruesome sight to something beautiful produces the seductive quality that consistently appears in O’Brien’s work and he makes it clear that the war and its landscape backdrop have a strange and eerie ability to draw people in.