Innocence In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The story, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is both a story of love and a story of war. But more than either of those types of stories, The Things They Carried is a story of losing one’s innocence. A war story is a story in which the characters go fight in war, there is much violence, loss of life and a sense of fighting for one’s country. On the other hand, a love story is a story where one or more characters feel love towards one another, sometime the love is not reciprocated by one of the characters, there is always strong feelings involved and occasionally heartbreak. Finally, the concept of innocence is the idea of not knowing the horrors of the world. The horrors of war and the horrors of heartbreak. When people are born, they

Cross felt great guilt for Lavender’s death, he felt that if he had only been paying attention instead of daydreaming of Martha, Lavender would not be dead. “ He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 2647). Lieutenant Cross had been the in presence of the death of a friend, but it was not paying attention, but rather thinking of his love back home. Cross felt that if only he had been paying attention to his men instead of thinking of Martha, Lavender would not be dead. The weight of guilt had begun taking away Cross’s innocence. In his guilt, he burned the letters from Martha. “In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned the war… She wasn’t involved. She signed the letters Love, but it wasn’t love, and all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. Virginity was no longer an issue. He hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard hating kind of love” (O’Brien 2651). Lieutenant Cross’s innocence was burned with the letters. He realized that Martha truly did not love him, he learned hate in that moment, he hated her for not loving him back, he hated that she consumed his mind and that now one of his friends was dead and he could not do anything about it. His realization that Martha did not truly love him back and it was silly to hold onto her was a moment of clarity of Lieutenant Cross. In this instance Cross’s loss of instance can be