Synopsis: In this chapter the protagonist, Mary Anne Bell, comes to be with her boyfriend Mark Fossie during war. When she first comes over she is a very innocent girl, but at the end of the chapter she is violent and addicted to war. Figurative Language: #1- (simile)“And over the next two weeks they stuck together like a pair of high school steadies.”
Single-Sentence Summary: Lieutenant Cross visits Tim O’Brien; the two of them share coffee and cigarettes reminiscing about the war and Lieutenant Cross’s old love Martha. Explanation: Lieutenant Cross spent a lot of time in “The Things They Carried” talking about his love for Martha. In the second chapter titled “Love” O’Brien ties up the loose ends of the story he started. I choose this line because it confirms all of Cross’s suspicions that how she signed the letters “Love Martha” was only a figure of speech that she did not love him. I choose it because the passage it provides closure.
Everything start with this guy called Jimmy Cross a leader who was in love with Martha like in page 42 “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.” Martha was a college student in New Jersey and he usually carried letters from her but not love letters. He has some specials descriptions of her, one of the most mentioned it's that she was virgin, she had a virgin appearance that was one of the thing he most appreciated from her. The realistic feeling that I felt with this book were uniques. I have never readed a book like this before.
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.”
The first mention of love is in “The Things They Carried,” when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’ strong infatuation with Martha is revealed. His attitude seems innocent enough as he “want[s] Martha to love him as he loved her” (1). The reciprocity of this pure emotion, illustrated by the repetition of “love,” is quickly shot down as the officer is portrayed as obsessed with Martha’s rejection of him rather than simply in love. One of the most striking moments that interweaves the violent nature of war with his memories of the girl is presented in his desire to “carr[y] her up the stairs to her room and t[ie] her to the bed and [touch] that left knee all night long” (4). The run-on structure of the sentence conveys the unhealthy excitement of a man who plays this moment over and over again in his mind.
Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.
Jimmy constantly daydreams about a woman named Martha as he leads his squad through Vietnam. He loves this woman so much that he brings along a photo of her which he guards and that play around with a rock in his mouth, licking it and so forth as he daydreams about her even if his relationship with Martha is a fantasy. After one of the soldiers named Lavender is killed, Jimmy realizes that he has to perform his duty to lead his squad. He realizes that he cannot be in love while be in a war at the same time. It shows that even death can cause someone to change.
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,
When the author expresses the feelings within Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s troops we see their individual personalities. When the author used characterization, symbolism, and tone, they truly brought out the theme of physical and emotional burdens throughout “The Things They
Have you ever done something wrong? Did you try to place blame other places until eventually coming to the conclusion that it’s your fault? Of course you have your human. We try to do anything to get rid of that guilty feeling that comes from our conscious. This is also happening to the soldiers of Alpha Company in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, especially after one of their men dies in combat.
Jimmy Cross is the first lieutenant who carries pictures and letters from Martha, the woman he loves who—sadly—does not love him back. The pictures and letters from Martha symbolize Jimmy’s longing to be loved and comforted. It is ironic that although he is the first lieutenant who is expected to take charge and lead others, yet he never took charge of his own love life. This is a regret and burden Cross carries to the end of the story. “It was very sad, he thought.
Ambiguity Lingers On Edith Wharton, who is an American author, states “The novelist must rely on what maybe called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation” (Wharton). Tim O’Brien uses illuminating moments to show how war makes guilt ambiguous. By examining three specific moments, the reader discovers how difficult it is to deal with the ambiguities of guilt. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross suffers from the ambiguity of guilt about Ted Lavender’s death.
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.
In the short story “The Things They Carried” the general theme revolved around the emotional struggles of all the men and how they dealt with issues of war, love, fear, and loss. The tale is intended to symbolize the internal warfare of soldiers in war and the mental struggles of dealing with the risk of danger on a day to day basis. Author Tim O’Brien being a Vietnam War veteran, experienced this firsthand and uses imagery and physical juxtapositions to compare both the emotional and physical baggage that the men carried throughout the war. One of the main characters in the story, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who was the leader of the platoon in the story, faced many emotional problems. He was struggling with a love interest back in the United States and torn between putting emotional energies into both the thought of her while still maintaining the wellbeing of his troops and being a respectable officer.
For example, Jimmy has been in love with Martha and carries her letters. These letters are “signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. " Jimmy’s daydreaming about Martha is a way of escaping the war and his responsibilities as a leader, which later results in guilt. When a comrade is killed he thought that “he had loved Martha more than this men” and that “this was something he would have have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.” Crosses feels guilty for fantasizing about someone who doesn't even love him and denying his duties as a
