"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" as Literature: "Sweetheart" and Heart of Darkness
by John Stevens*
The "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is not dependent on Vietnam to be a story—it is the legitimate descendent of a literary tradition that perhaps has it roots as deep as the Odyssey. There is a darkness that dwells in the human spirit, and, given the right set of circumstances, that darkness can and will overpower and dominate. From the cup of Circe to Mary Anne’s night ambushes, a dark self lies waiting to assert its dominance.
I mentioned a literary heritage; let’s take a look specifically at one literary antecedent, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness is a framed story—a story inside another story--, of Marlow’s journey into the darkest Congo to find Kurtz, an ivory station manager for a Belgian company. Kurtz had originally gone into the Congo to bring the light of civilization to the savages and to bring to them the progress, enlightenment and advancement that the European presence would bring to Africa. Kurtz is a universal genius, writer, painter, poet, musician—all of the things that represent civilized man at his peak. The haunting thing about Kurtz’s experience is that he has been seduced by the very things he has gone to fix. He has taken a black tribal woman—a savage—as his lover and ruthlessly kills Africans, steals their natural resources, and worst of all, has allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. All this has happened before Marlow meets Kurtz, so we learn of it as he gets closer and closer to his destination. The transformation of Kurtz is revealed progressively.
Sweetheart is also a framed or boxed story—O’Brien telling us the story that is told by Rat Kiley. In "Sweetheart," the analog of Kurtz, is the American Sweetheart Mary Anne. Mary Anne—one of the most traditional American names of the 60’s, the name chosen for the innocent castaway on Gilligan’s Island—comes to Vietnam to be with her fiancé, Mark Fossie. In the way that Kurtz represents cultured man at his peak, Mary Anne represents American innocence at a fundamental level. She is just out of high school, blonde, compete with cosmetics bag, pink sweater and white culottes. The story takes place at a station—not ivory, but an aid station, separated from the mainstream of the action of the war. Almost as soon as she arrives, Mary Anne shows a curiosity about the area that is almost disconcerting. As Eddie Diamond says, "That’s the scary part. I promise you, this girl will learn" (97). As Mary Anne stays, she demonstrates more and more fascination with the jungle life and is less and less like the sweet girl that got off the chopper. It’s as if she is becoming somebody else—Fossie mentions to her that perhaps it’s time for her to go home and she replies, " Everything I want is right here" (99). The frightening irony of the statement is that had she spoken it before, she would have meant that Fossie was all she needed; now, it’s everything except Fossie. She learns about wounds and weapons. She stays out later and later and one night, doesn’t come in at all. Fossie fears she is with another man, but the reality is worse than that; she’s all-night patrolling with the Greenies. The Greenies are a group of Green Berets who exist just beyond the edge of civilization, at the edge of the station, more like animals than civilized men—the savages of Heart of Darkness. The transformation has taken pace; Mary Anne is has been seduced by the heart of darkness of the Greenies and the jungle. Like Kurtz in Heart, she now is functioning without conscience. Fossie can’t give it up, but she is irrevocably changed. She stares out at the mountains –"a haunted look, Rat said, partly terror, partly rapture" (105). Kurtz is also described as haunted –with a look of terror on his face.
The climax of the story comes when Fossie confronts Mary Anne in the Greenies’ hootch; he tries to assert himself over her, to compel her to behave normally, and she says, "You’re in a place—where you don’t belong" (111). Immediately, she means the Greenies’ hootch, with its rotting flesh, human skulls and bones, and Mary Anne, herself with a necklace of human tongues. The phrase, though, has a wider meaning, he doesn’t belong among the violence, the death, the evil—he doesn’t belong in Vietnam.
The transformation is complete; Mary Anne has been seduced by and has become a part of the Heart of Darkness that is the savagery of Vietnam—that for Kurtz was tribal Africa. The parallel is continued: Mark Fossie, who was in love with Mary Anne as Marlowe revered Kurtz, is struck full force by the enormity of the force of the evil—of the result of the person giving in to the dark side of the human spirit and accepting the mantel of savagery. Mary Anne perhaps is even more frightening than Kurtz, for she recognizes no horror; there is no regret. "It’s not bad," she says. "Sometimes I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country—the dirt, the death--…That’s how I feel. It’s like…this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it’s not bad" (111).
Fossie returns to Rat, as Marlow returns to Belgium, with a kind of bewildered disillusionment-- a sad, but no longer naive person, someone who has seen the dark side of the soul. As Rat Said, "you come over here clean and you get dirty and afterwards it’s never the same. A question of degree" (114). In Heart, Marlow’s listeners cannot understand the significance of the story he is telling. They have not experienced the situation and cannot or will not put themselves in the position to understand. One of the recurrent themes in O’Brien is the attempt of the Vietnam vet to communicate how it was "in country," and the inability to express the enormity of experience that can only be truly understood by those who shared in it. In a wider sense, it is also the challenge of the author to communicate a situation which the reader has not experienced and immerse the reader in that world.
There are significant parallels between "Sweetheart" and Heart. The physical setting of the jungle and the corruption of a main character in that setting, the discovery of that transformation by the other main character in the story are very similar. Also, The physical constructions of the story within a story are reflective. The main themes that have been identified in Heart—a search for self knowledge, the temptation toward the dark side of every person’s soul, or a more subtle theme that faith and responsibility tend to hold one in line with civilized standards—are all applicable to "Sweetheart."
Postscript:
During the discussion that followed the presentation of this paper, the topic of the possible truth of the story line was of considerable interest. While some maintained that the events of "Sweetheart" could never have taken place, others contended that the possibility, though remote, was real. I think one of the evaluative tools useful in discussing literature might be the question, "Did the author create a believable scenario?" in the case of "Sweetheart," I feel the answer to this question is a very solid "Yes." Whether in the world of Homer’s Troy, Charles Dickens’ London, or even Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the creation of a convincing world of events is a measure of the art of the craft. In this case, O’Brien certainly passes muster.
* John Stevens teaches English at Hamilton High School, Hamilton, IN