The Things They Carried

913 Words2 Pages

The woman that Cross is in love with is named Martha. She's barely a junior from Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. Although he is madly in love with her, Martha doesn't return the feelings back for him. This one-sided love causes him to ponder and lose focus of what is really important, keeping himself and his troops alive and well. As he is lying in his foxhole, he looks at pictures of Martha; he can't help to feel, "More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her" As shown, he just wants to be with her and to share a love with her. Over and over again, he would think about her; sometimes in foxholes, sometimes while marching, even at times of danger. This lack of focus on the real dilemma, their situation in the war, will be a costly one.

His love for Martha was unhealthy and almost obsessive. He still remembers clearly "touching that left knee" of Martha's. Even out in the field he still reminisces how her knee felt. During a mission to destroy some tunnels, Cross imagines the tunnel collapsing on him and Martha. He also wonders if she is still a virgin or not and wonders why her letter are signed "love". This distraction and incompetence of himself lead to the death of one of their fellow soldiers, Ted Lavender. He has been shot and killed, partly because of Cross' lack of focus on the situation. He keeps to himself as he blames the incident on only himself. Shockingly, as they were waiting for a chopper to take his body away, he digs a foxhole. While sitting in the hole, crying, he was also thinking of "Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men" at the same time. This abnormal love for Martha has defected his ability to perform his duties as a leader. Martha has possessed him so much that even "without willing it, he was thinking about Martha." This shows that he has lost control on where and when is the right time to think about things like that.

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was never the military type. He still wonders why he joined. His rank as lieutenant seems unreal. He never truly demonstrates leadership. He separates himself from the rest of the Alpha Company as he thinks about Martha.

Women and Their Role in The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien
897 Words | 2 Pages
One of the first women introduced to the reader was Martha. Martha is Lt. Jimmy Cross's love interest, even though she has only ever considered him a friend and nothing more. O'Brien uses the story of him and his misguidedness to show how the soldiers were completely separated from the war. After the war is over, the soldiers return home attempting to get back to their normal lives.
Read More
The Things They Carried by Tim O´brien
646 Words | 2 Pages
Lt. Jimmy Cross is extremely affected by Martha as his one time girlfriend; he is obsessed with even the thought of her.-- So obsessed with her, he even becomes distracted to the point an accident occurs for which he blames himself for the longest time. That Martha was a distracting factor shown through Tim’s observations of Lt. Cross. He loved her so much. On the march, through the hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salt and moisture. His mind wandered.
Read More
Character Analysis: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried
952 Words | 2 Pages
Jimmy Cross, being only twenty-four years old, was very inexperienced, as were most of the others serving in Vietnam. As stated by Tim O’Brien, in this short story, “He was just a kid at war, in love” (600). He didn’t want to be the leade...
Read More
the things they carried
1085 Words | 3 Pages
The things they carried, by Tim O'Brien.      "Oh man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin' Shredded Wheat." I chose to start off my essay with this particular extract from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can become. However, callousness varies, whether they choose to be apathetic, like Tim shows us after his grenade episode.
Read More
The Things They Carried and Araby
1351 Words | 3 Pages
To begin with, both Lieutenant Cross and the boy in “Araby” showed a level of immaturity by acting the way they did towards the girls they loved. In “The Things They Carried” Cross touched Martha’s left knee while they were at a movie. He constantly thought about that moment and was completely obsessed. His obsession is evident in they story when it states “Right then, he thought, he should’ve done something brave. He should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long” (O’Brien 936). Misinterpreting such a simple gesture and turning it into a sexual fantasy shows immaturity. In “Araby” the boy also made more of a situation than it actually was in reality. When he finally talked to the girl he was obsessed with, he took the conversation the wrong way. She expressed to him that she was not able to attend the bazaar because she had to go to a retreat. He responded “If I go, I ...
Read More
The Things They Carried
877 Words | 2 Pages
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.
Read More
The Things They Carried
1098 Words | 3 Pages
Symbolism in stories is dependent on how the author writes, the title, and the characters. Titles in literature are very important to the symbolism of a story an example of this is Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”. As the story goes on it shows not only the literal meaning of what they carried but also symbolically the burdens that they had mentally.
Read More
The True Leader In Tim Obrien's The Things They Carried
1456 Words | 3 Pages
Often times people are unable to control what motivates them, as well as our desires. The heart has a mind of its own; sometimes we bypass our ethical responsibilities for these motivations and desires. Consequently, people need adversity to hit so that people can refocus like a phone camera zooming in on pictures. In Tim Obrien’s The Things They Carried, it’s obvious that Jimmy Cross’s one and only desire was a girl named Martha. Tim Obrien uses the power phrase "Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps." Tim Obrien explains the importance of the word "in it's intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or march, but the word implied burdens far beyond. Richardson states "to hump has a sexual meaning, which gives the reader a sense of Cross's sexual frustration."" The story states “they were not love letters,
Read More
Change In The Things They Carried
1623 Words | 4 Pages
Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it.
Read More
The Thing They Carried
819 Words | 2 Pages
The novel The Thing They Carried is a compilation of short stories that share underlying themes and characters. One of the stories is called “How to tell a True War Story”. In this story the narrator expands on a central theme of the distinction between truth and fiction when writing a war story. The story, like most of the other stories in the novel jumps erratically between events, which oftentimes creates confusion and a sense of the surreal in the story. Throughout the story the narrator repeatedly shows that when writing a war story the “story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”(O’Brien pg. 171) This quotation encompasses the theme and supports it. The narrator’s use of stylistic devices coupled with stories such as “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” exemplifies how fiction can fully represent the truth whilst the facts fall miserably short.
Read More
The Things They Carried by Tim O’ Brien
635 Words | 2 Pages
Lieutenant Cross is a character who, until the death of a soldier, has been very loose and not taken the war seriously. He had let his soldiers throw away their supplies, take drugs, and sing happy songs in the middle of the serious war. He was only concerned with Martha; he dreamt about being with her, and he was delighted when he received letters from her. Tim O’Brien says, “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.” (p. 2) This shows how all he cared about was Martha; he was not paying attention to his real life and his surroundings. He was basically living in a world of fantasy because they lived in two separate worlds. Being unable to wake up from this dream made him potentially weak because his mind was always wandering elsewhere, never in the current situation. This made him an easy target for his enemies because if this had gone on, then he would start to fear death, fear fighting, and fear the war. He would become a coward because he would wish for the day when he could be with Martha again after the war. This would greatly weaken him and his army both, and they would most likely lose to the enemy.
Read More
Lessons Learned In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
1344 Words | 3 Pages
We are first introduced to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his 17 men platoon. They are stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. We are taken through many of their missions and are given many insights from the main
Read More
The Things They Carried - Themes
972 Words | 2 Pages
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.
Read More
Theme Of Burdens In The Things They Carried
1156 Words | 3 Pages
Lt. Cross has a borderline crazy obsession with Martha, a girl that he was a friend with before leaving for Vietnam. Martha has kept in touch with Cross by sending him letters and pictures. Cross is totally obsessed
Read More
The Things They Carried Analysis
842 Words | 2 Pages
Lt. Cross is the main character in the story and the author stressed to the reader that there is a war between personal life and war life. “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.” (The Things They Carried.42) Lt. Cross allowed for his emotional burden to also become his mental burden. Jimmy Cross loved a woman that was in his past and he held on to every memory that he could of her. This character also has his platoon li...
Read More

Open Document

Wait a second!

The Things They Carried

Women and Their Role in The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien