Jimmy Cross Character Analysis

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Tim O’brien sends us a message that the soldiers that go to war carry emotions with them and these emotions are real and they fight these emotions internally. Tim O’brien shows this message through his descriptions of what the soldiers carry and the character development of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his team. Tim O’brien tells us about the the soldiers gear and the emotional baggage they carry, “They carried all the emotional baggage of the men that might die. Grief, terror, love , longing -- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass” The soldiers carried all these emotions and even though emotions don’t technically have any weight the emotions they carried felt like they had mass and weight. They were fighting and dying …show more content…

He realized that he “loved Martha more than his men”( Jimmy loves Martha, a girl who is at home that may or may not love him more than the men who were willing to fight and die by his side. He loved Martha more than the men who struggled and fought with him everyday. Jimmy had these internal conflicts of showing love to Martha or being loyal and leading his men that put their lives on the line everyday for him. In the end Jimmy realizes through his internal conflict he realizes his men are the priority, “ No more fantasies he told himself. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead.”(34) Jimmy realizes after Ted Lavender dies he would have to give up his love for Martha. He was in a place where carrying his love for Martha around would get his men killed. He could no long carry his love around for Martha and carry the grief, bravery, and loyalty that they all shared. These were the things that would keep his team

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