Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, of the Alpha Company, carries various reminders of his love for Martha, a girl from his college in New Jersey who has given no indication of returning his love. Cross carries her letters in his backpack and her good-luck pebble in his mouth. After a long day’s march, he unwraps her letters and imagines the prospect of her returning his love someday. Martha is an English major who writes letters that quote lines of poetry and never mention the war. Though the letters are signed “Love, Martha” Cross understands that this gesture should not give him false hope.
“The Things They Carried” Headline: What O’Brien and his team carried both physically and mentally will shock you Newspaper Section: This article would fit the world section of the newspaper. Single-Sentence Summary: Tim O’Brien the protagonist and the narrator of the story is describing lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is active in Vietnam however Cross is preoccupied thinking about a girl called Martha whom he dated prior to the war. Explanation: This quotation from “The Things They Carried” provides an opinion on why men go to war. O’Brien claims that men who go to war are cowards, not as heroes. They go because they are forced to go and because they didn’t have the bravery to refuse to go.
The chapter depicts love as an emotion that is carried as it talks about soldiers who carry physical things needed like a poncho, bug repellent, rations, and how "They all carried ghosts". Lieutenant Jimmy Cross likes to carry letters. Cross carried the letters as reminders of his love for Martha, a girl from his college. He also has no indication of her returning his love, but Cross still
Tim O’Brien is the narrator of “The Things They Carried” recalls his personal experience in the Vietnam War. Tim writes about Jimmy Cross who is the lieutenant goes into battle with several men in his charge. Lieutenant Cross doesn’t show that his is a born leader in the beginning of the story in fact Jimmy appears to be unsure of everything he does. Lieutenant Cross does show that he is brave when he led all his men through the war. Lieutenant Cross also shows that he is a leader and has integrity when he suffer the death of the men that lost their life’s so that the troops didn’t have to bear the brunt, or the guilt, and the confusion.
The character, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, holds onto the hope of being with his love back home, Martha. Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, sends him love letters, except they are not actually love letters. The book states, “They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack,” (p. 1). The lieutenant would imagine Martha and him together, and the thought of her touching those letters would run through his mind.
Tim Obrien’s 1990 story “The Things They Carried” describes the experience of a group of soldiers in the Vietnam War. The soldiers are under the responsibility of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. With Jimmy, he carries his love for Martha, and it distracts him from his duty. In the end, he tries to forget Martha because he thinks the death of Ted Lavender is his fault because he was distracted. Respectively, each soldier carries assets that are material and mental.
In the first chapter, the author lists things some of the men in Lt. Cross’ corps carry. Some items were necessities and some gave the reader ideas of what kind of person one was based on their possessions. Lt. Cross carried photographs, such as a girl named Martha, playing volleyball or in front of a brick wall. Letters signed love at the end of them, and a lucky pebble from a girl he was infatuated with. From these personal items, we can clearly see that he loves this girl and keeps her close to his heart.
Throughout the story, O'Brien lists the things each man carried such as food, guns, ammunition, and personal items, like Jimmy's letters from Martha. O'Brien even goes into great details about the items, describing both their literal and emotional weight (O’Brien, 1990). O'Brien writes, "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (O'Brien, 1990). Another thing Jimmy carries is the significance of his name.
Along with his military gear, O’Brien states, “Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps” (p. 115). Cross loves Martha, and “More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her” (p. 114), but is unsure of whether she loves him back. Despite his uncertainty,
In the story written by Tim O’Brien called “The Things They Carried”, he tells a story set during a war about the evolution of young soldiers as their mindset is affected by what they see and feel. The soldiers each carry physical and emotional weights that allow them to keep their humanity but in war, the same things that are valued in the outside world become a distraction and potentially fatal. While Martha is not physically fighting the mind with them she is subconsciously in the mind of Lieutenant Cross. Martha represents everything war is not, she represents innocence, love, and affection, that to him is a way to get away from what’s going on around him. Martha is described as a very artistic person; she is a junior at Saint Sebastian college and in the letters Lieutenant cross carries with him she writes in a very beautiful way about trivial things like her professors, roommates and her midterm exams.
The things men carried inside.” (par. 6) In conclusion, the characters in “The Things They Carried” can be better understood through a closer look at the objects they brought with them. “They carried all they could bear, and then some, . . . “ (par 2).
Jimmy was “purely invented, like Martha, and like Kiowa or Mitchell Sanders and all the others (The Textual “Truth” behind Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried).” These characters, and the stories that they took part in symbolize the negative feelings and experiences that O’Brien came across in Vietnam. The death of his fellow soldiers and loneliness ate him up until he had to write to get them off his
The power of intangible things we carry Throughout our lives we hold on to many things close to us whether they are tangible or intangible. Tim O’Brien writes about each soldier and how they all have tangible and intangible things they carry. People carry numerous things mainly personal items for instances letters, pictures, clothing, jewelry, and other affectionate tangible items. Other intangible items that were carried include guilt, shame, and fear. Every soldier was affected by the things they carried.
“The Things they carried”, an autobiographical story that is written by Tom O’Brien describing his memories of the Vietnam war. Although the stories talk mainly about his memories of the war, they also include female figures that played a significant role in the stories plot. Martha, one of the main female characters in the story, symbolized different emotions in the story. The relationship between the men of Alpha company and the girls they loved aren't always as they hope. Although, the things that Jimmy carried were mostly used to describe the war experience, the pictures, letters, and imaginations-of Martha- came as motivations for Jimmy to survive the war.
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