Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

When reading a story or even watching a movie, a character's actions cannot be fully explained. The author is the only person who knows everything about a character, but they tend to leave that open for the reader's interpretation. In Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" the main character Jimmy Cross is plagued by the war around him and inside of him. All of the men in the story are fighting in the war, fighting for their lives, but each character is also struggling with personal issues, especially Jimmy. Based on a literary analysis and O'Brien's use of literary techniques, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a characterized representation for war portrayed by the things he carried (physically and emotionally), his affection for Martha,

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. Joanne McCarthy in her article, "The Things They Carried" writes, "Jimmy, a boy's name, is paired with a man's title, lieutenant; these two qualities meet or cross in the protagonist" (McCarthy, 2004, para. 13). Jimmy is essentially a boy in a man's body and he is now required to make mature choices based on his already existing decisions. O’Brien uses the significance of Jimmy and his character as a literary technique to demonstrate how he is a representation for war. Jimmy is defined by the things he carried, and the things he carried both physically and emotionally create a war for Jimmy internally, especially when those things involve