"She's already gone (107)."

        Contrary to widespread accounts of war as a unifying force, the supreme constructor of brotherhood and co-sacrifice, O'Brien conflates intimacy with war and utter individualism.
        Mary Anne enters Vietnam through and with Mark Fossie. She is apart from the war, physically and spiritually, until Fossie flies her in. She lands in country with concern for other people's opinions of her. Mary Anne does everything with Mark, her actions primarily trained towards the betterment and perpetuation of their relationship. She is effervescent and social, even flirtatious with the other soldiers, embodying a personality she feels will win their favor.
        Once Mary Anne claims Vietnam, using the Green Berets' raids to experience and embrace the heart of the war, she appears to Rat Kiley as completely self-directed. Mary Anne describes her intimacy with the war in a "voice slow and impassive. She was not trying to persuade (106)," she asserts, "You just don't know... Sometimes I want to eat this place. The whole country -the dirt, the death- I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me...  I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark -I'm on fire almost -I'm burning away into nothing -but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am. You can't feel that anywhere else (106)." Mary Anne is not trying to convince Mark Fossie, because she doesn't care whether he is convinced. Through becoming herself completely, feeling exactly what she is, and knowing exactly who she is, she becomes the war. She is content to burn away to nothing and to consume the war and have it BE her, because the war has given her complete self-understanding, and therein utter satisfaction. War strips away all of Mary Anne's affectations and extra-personal concerns, presumably imposed on her by the American culture she left behind, and what is left underneath is war itself. Is O'Brien suggesting that at least certain people have war in their hearts, kept down by social constructs? Or is he claiming that the sublime self-discovery of war can engender such reverence that one might choose to identify with war?
        In either case, or in some synthesis of the two, O'Brien makes clear that a person filled with war is fundamentally singular. "In part it was her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues... Just for a moment the girl looked to Mark Fossie with something close to contempt (105)." Mary Anne is unaffected by the censure or anguish of the man she once loved. Her eyes, generally held as a window to the soul, display no person within. Either swallowing war has de-humanized Mary Anne, or it has eradicated the interface between her self and other people, rendering her perfectly self-possessed. Mary Anne's apathy towards others is epitomized by her necklace of tongues. I assume from the necklace that Mary Anne has killed people. The fact that she is wearing the necklace entails that she is owning in the intra-personal realm the value of killing and irreverence for life. Lastly, the fact that the necklace is composed of tongues suggests that Mary Anne has no regard for what other people have to say. Therefore, after being seduced by war, and consequently becoming war, Mary Anne reaches a point of ultimate singularity.
       O'Brien comments on Mary Anne's singularity through Rat Kiley's third-hand completion of the tale. The Green Beret's claim that despite her disappearance, "Mary Anne was still somewhere out there in the dark (110)." "Late at night... they almost saw her sliding through the shadows... She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill (110)." Mary Anne becomes the ambiguous fear in the night. She becomes the constant chance of death. By sacrificing her regard for other people, Mary Anne loses her personhood. She literally becomes an element of war in general.