Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” takes place in a war zone during the Vietnam war. The story circulates around a platoon of soldiers but mostly around Jimmy Cross, a young platoon officer who is unable to concentrate on the war or handle his responsibilities because he is too self-absorbed even though he means well.
Jimmy Cross is vulnerable and distracted. He has an obsessive love for Martha that distracts him from properly fulfilling his duties as an officer. At the end of paragraph 1 Tim O’Brien states that, “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.” Jimmy Cross’ preoccupation with

In paragraph 1, O’Brien states, “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack.” O’Brien also repeats “He would” which leads the reader to assume that Jimmy Cross uses his ritual to intentionally detach himself from the stress of being a young man in love at war. Thus causing him to unintentionally detach himself from his men and reality. The pebble he receives from Martha causes him to become more engulfed by a fantasy

After Lavender’s death, Jimmy Cross and his men mercilessly burn down the village of Than Khe presumably to burn away Cross’ guilt. In paragraph 40 after Lavender’s corpse is taken away, Jimmy Cross leads his men into Than Khe and they destroy it while killing animals and perhaps even people that inhabited the village. Even though, Jimmy Cross may not have participated physically he is still the one who gave the order as a commanding officer after feeling overwhelmed by Lavender’s death. He has an epiphany and realizes that Martha does not love him and never would. In Paragraph 43 when Cross is mourning for Lavender’s death he realizes that he isn’t really mourning for him but the different worlds he and Martha are living in. Jimmy is living in a fantasy world he has created in his mind where Martha is in love with him while she is in the real world at college preoccupied with her studies. Jimmy Cross burns Martha’s letters to reach closure and burn away his past self. In paragraphs 82 -84 O’Brien writes, “On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame