“The Things They Carried”
In “The Things They Carried” Martha is frequently talked about throughout this short story, so it is obvious that she plays an important role. The women throughout the short story played a role as to where they were not seen but played a big supporting role. Martha is a character that keeps Jimmy Cross going. She plays more than one role in Jimmy Cross’s life. She plays the role of a motivator, a lover and in some ways a distraction. Martha plays the role of a motivator throughout the short story because just the mere thought of her keeps Jimmy sane and able to face the obstacles in each day. The thought of Martha and Jimmy being more than friends keeps mystery and hope within his everyday life. Lieutenant Cross
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Though she keeps Lieutenant Cross going and able to make it day to day, she does so by distracting him from reality. She distracts him to a point that he thinks he is responsible for the death of one of his comrade. The reason he thinks this is because he was thinking about Martha so much that it was hard to stay focused, so when Lavender came back from peeing he was shot in his head and Cross felt responsible for his death. Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton thinks Cross feels so burdened about Lavender’s death she states that “After he burns Martha's' letters and photographs he vows “to do what they had always done,” but this time with “no more fantasies.” In the same way that they often discarded in the field what they no longer needed, Lt. Cross swears to “dispense with love,” to put it aside as an unnecessary burden.” He also says he feels like she is a distraction because while strunk was in the tunnel Cross was supposed to be supervising him but instead he had his mind on Martha. “Trouble, he thought---a cave-in maybe. And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha” (pg.11). He acts as if he has no control over his fantasy of longing to be with her. Rena Korb states “Jimmy Cross's ideals of home, fantasies of a girl back home, simply serve as deadly distractions.” She says this because of the death of Lavender and the irresponsible actions towards the rest of the
In the first paragraph of the story, Jimmy Cross' rank is noted (First Lieutenant) along with the fact that he "carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey" (434). From the outset, the reader sees that Martha plays a pivotal role in his thoughts and actions. The fact that Jimmy Cross "would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire" after he marched the entire day and dug a foxhole indicates that he thinks often of Martha (434). While these thoughts of a lover back home provide some form of escape for Lt. Cross, they also burden him with the obsessive feelings of unrequited love. ...
In the first chapter of The Things They Carried, O'Brien lists all of what each man brings with them to war. It seems very truthful, but there is doubt in your mind as to whether or not Jimmy Cross really carried letters from a girl named Martha or even if a girl named Martha really existed.
Lt. Jimmy Cross is extremely affected by Martha as his one time girlfriend; he is obsessed with even the thought of her.-- So obsessed with her, he even becomes distracted to the point an accident occurs for which he blames himself for the longest time. That Martha was a distracting factor shown through Tim’s observations of Lt. Cross. He loved her so much. On the march, through the hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salt and moisture. His mind wandered.
...g exclusively on the war and men of whom he is in charge of. It ends up taking the death of one of his men, Ted Lavender, for Jimmy to realize that he needed to get his priorities straight; which included, being the leader that his troops deserved. In conclusion, Jimmy’s character traits changed immensely, from several negative traits in the beginning, to ample positive traits in the end. Jimmy took on his responsibility as the First Lieutenant, and began taking the necessary steps to bettering himself, along with his troops.
The central theme of the story is the age-old conflict of life and death. On a more personal level with First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the round character and protagonist of "The Things They Carried", it is a conflict of love, his antagonist and of war.
In O’Brien’s story “The Things They Carried”, Jimmy Cross thinks the death of his comrades, Ted Lavender is his fault but it’s not. Jimmy Cross was only 22 year old too young to be First Lieutenant. Jimmy Cross’s obsession with Martha reading and a daydreaming about her letters. In which Jimmy Cross’s mind could escape from the ugliness of the war. In Vietnam War, being a strong leader over the troop is impossible the war’s mission are undefined. Ted Lavender’s death was a great tragedy of the Vietnam War, and not the fault of Jimmy Cross.
...ave been. That night Cross “felt shame. He hated himself. He loved Martha more than his men, and as consequence Lavender was now dead.” Cross sobbed that night “he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world” he came to the realization that he could no longer think about her because she did not love him the way that he loved her. He also could not continue to put her before the wellbeing of his platoon. So he gave up on her and the idea that they would ever be together.
Lieutenant Cross is a character who, until the death of a soldier, has been very loose and not taken the war seriously. He had let his soldiers throw away their supplies, take drugs, and sing happy songs in the middle of the serious war. He was only concerned with Martha; he dreamt about being with her, and he was delighted when he received letters from her. Tim O’Brien says, “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.” (p. 2) This shows how all he cared about was Martha; he was not paying attention to his real life and his surroundings. He was basically living in a world of fantasy because they lived in two separate worlds. Being unable to wake up from this dream made him potentially weak because his mind was always wandering elsewhere, never in the current situation. This made him an easy target for his enemies because if this had gone on, then he would start to fear death, fear fighting, and fear the war. He would become a coward because he would wish for the day when he could be with Martha again after the war. This would greatly weaken him and his army both, and they would most likely lose to the enemy.
He carries photographs of Martha and the memories he had with Martha when they went to the movies and how he touched her knee. When Lavender was shot, Lieutenant Cross blamed himself for not being able to protect him because of his imagination of tunnels collapsing on top of him and Martha. “Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love. And, it was real, too. When I write about her now, three decades later, it’s tempting to dismiss it as a crush, an infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and rich as love can ever get.”
Initially, Jimmy Cross started his mission with a distorted image in his head, which lead to his amazing turn around in the end. Jimmy cross had to learn the hard way, that fantasies aren’t real, they are just thoughts the mind wants to believe. He soon learned what reality was, even though it wasn’t the easiest or most of all pleasurable, way to figure out the truth. Ted Lavender’s death was a blessing in the sense that Jimmy turned his whole life around and started to focus on what support to give his men to succeed and be better survivors, than Ted Lavender was. Jimmy cared for his men towards the end, that lead him to understand what love is. “Love”, is a very powerful word, that has the power and prestige to make some people zone out of their own world and live in fantasy land, as did Jimmy. Jimmy cross carried integrity and grace in the beginning of the story, but by the end added faith and hope to his nap sack that helped him become a better person for his men.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from the woman he loved who was still back at home. “They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.” These letters Cross carried along with him give in an insight into his past, his present, and his character. Martha, his love, was a long distance from him, but he refused to let his memories of her be erased. It didn’t matter to Cross whether or not the love he had for Martha was mutual, but he would still “spend the last hour of light pretending.” Not only would they remind him of his past, these pictures would also give Cross something to at least hope for and have faith in. It didn’t matter that he would “pretend” that Martha loved him as much as he loved her; the photographs and letters of her that he carried were “suitable” to his personality. These things may have been meaningless to other men, but to Cross they were a sign of hope, his past, and gave him some...
The role of women in the book The Things They Carried is an important one. These men have various views and feeling about the women they love, the women they hate, and the women that they may not know and can only dream of. While the text given to the ideas of women is small is stature, it is quite significant in meaning. There are three main women that enter and disrupt the lives of the Alpha company; Mary-Ann, Martha, and Henry Dobbin's girlfriend, who remains unnamed. The men carry letters, rocks, and even pantyhose to remind them of the women back home, and that which they hope to return to. The relationships between the men of Alpha company and their significant females are not always as they might hope, and in fact, seem to be as much of a burden and a problem as they are a reminder of what it is they want.
Jimmy believes that he truly loves Martha. Although the love from Martha does not seem to be reciprocated. Jimmy says of these letters, “They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping… after as day’s march he would dig his fox hole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with his fingers and spend the last hours of light pretending” (O’Brien 2640). The way that Jimmy pretended night after night that Martha truly loved him shows Jimmy’s innocence in the way of love. He knows logically that Martha does not really love him but the innocence inside him can not help but want her love. He also says of the letters, “ They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and mean what he sometimes pretended it meant” (O’Brien 2640). This is a continuation of Lieutenant Cross’s pretending. The way the Cross continually pretends that Martha loves him is a way of protecting himself from the truth, to protect his
In the first chapter during a tunnel search, Ted Lavender went off to use the restroom. When he was walking back and was close to the other soldiers, he was shot in the head and killed instantly. The book describes how his mouth was open, his teeth were broken, and his eyes swollen black. The book states that Jimmy Cross, “... felt shame. He hated himself. He loved Martha more than his men and as a consequence Lavender was now dead.” This would be something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of his life.” When Ted Lavender was shot in the back of the head, all the soldiers were in shock, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross blamed himself because he was in charge of his men and was side-tracked by his love for, Martha, an old school friend. Later in the book, Jimmy Cross visits one of the soldiers from the war. They look through the photos and see one of Ted
One of the first women introduced to the reader is Martha. Martha is Lt. Jimmy Cross's love interest, even though she has only ever considered him as a friend and nothing more. O'Brien's uses the story of him and his misguidedness to show how the soldiers were completely separated from the war. After the war is over, the soldiers returned home attempting to get back to their normal lives. But as was shown with Cross and Martha, it didn’t turn out that way. Trying to cope with all the death that he found in Vietnam, Cross does not believe that Martha isn't a virgin and believes that they still could have a life together. This was meant to be a comfort and safety mechanism when he was possibly faced with rejection and death all around him. It got to the point that it was all he thought about up to Ted lavenders death. Trying to rid himself of the guilt he “burned Martha’s letters. The he burned the two photographs… He realized it was only a gesture… you couldn’t burn away the blame” (O’Brien 23) This shows that he knew that his obsessions with Martha is what lead to the death of ted Lavender, and even when he reali...