The movie shows the character having more feeling especially after he couldn't find Mary Anne. A third character that is portrayed differently in the movie than in the book is Mary Anne, who is the main female character of the chapter. The movie stressed the fact that Mary Anne wanted to learn more about the Vietnamese way of life. There was a scene in the movie where Mary Anne spent time with the Vietnamese soldiers learning their language and how to cook their food. They also show her going to a Vietnamese village trying to communicate with the children. In the book it says, "The guys sometimes liked to kid her about it-our own little native, they"d say-but Mary Anne would just smile and stick out her tongue." She was not only into the Vietnamese way of life, but she was also into the life of a soldier in war. She wanted to learn more about how to shoot a gun. She wanted to be like one of the guys. The novel installs all these ideas, but it also allows the reader to use their creativity. It also gives more emphasis on little traits of the character that make the character more unique. Therefore, due to the film's inability to give audiences more information about the characters, their role and their emotions, the novel is much more informative. .
The novel is capable of giving readers more insight into the story with the use of symbols and hidden meanings. It is able to do this because it depicts important underlying messages and incidents. For instance, in the novel one may realize that Mary Anne starts to wear a necklace with tongues on it. This shows the readers that Mary Anne is no longer than clean innocent girl. She is now a brutal solder always ready to kill. "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 111). Portrayed in both the novel and movie is Mary Anne's change in personal hygiene.