Distractions In The Things They Carried

Martha is the first women we meet in the book. She is pretty much the typical stay at home war girl. She writes letters to Lt. Jimmy Cross, they met at a college in New Jersey but nothing sparked between them besides a friendship. There isn't any hope of them ever being together but Jimmy Cross still thinks about her constantly everyday. In one particular letter she sends him a good-luck-pebble. "Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline and carried it in her breast pocket for several days" (8). Jimmy Cross reads the letter spends hours wondering who she was at the beach with, if she was with a man, if they were a couple. When the women sent letters home, it really helped keep the morale of the soldier's. Although Martha continues to kind of mislead Jimmy when she signs the letters "love." "Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open" (12).

Jimmy Cross being the immature lieutenant is affected being responsible of his men, and carries much of the war’s burden. Every time one of Cross’s men dies, he experiences deep regrettable feelings that he should have been a better

Lieutenant Cross was in love with a girl back home named Martha. He carried around letters that she wrote to him and pictures that she gave him. His obsession of Martha took his focus away from the war. “He had loved Martha more than his

Martha also weighs upon Lt. Cross' actions (or lack thereof). Early in the story, the reader can see how Martha is a distraction during troop movements. Tasting the letter from Martha does not directly distract Lt. Cross from his duties, but it does lead the reader to believe that she is too often the focus of his

On page 125, When she was nine, my daughter asked if i had ever killed anyone. She knew about the war, she knew i’d been a soldier . “You keep writing these war stories,” she said,” So i guess you must’ve killed somebody”. It was a difficult moment , but i did what seemed right, which was to say, “ of course not”, and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday , i hope , she’ll ask again. But here i want to pretend she’s a grown -up….}. This quote shows that Kathleen is just a young girl asking many questions to her dad to know if he has ever did anyone because she is very curious and seemed very interested in knowing what her father did when he was in the war. If her dad tells her that he has killed someone then she might think that he is a bad guy and not a good father but killing someone that is so

The Things They Carried is about a group of soldiers set during the Vietnam War. We are first introduced to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross in the jungle setting of Vietnam. At first glance the reader is submerged into his secrete obsession with a women named Martha. He carries letters from her enjoys fantasies involving the two and even has gone as so far as to lick an envelope just because she did all in the name of love or his version of it. Love is an emotion felt by every human being no matter age or period of time.

To begin, the narrator who we perceived to be O’brien himself tells the story in a third person perspective, describing the thoughts and actions of first lieutenant Jimmy Cross. As the story opens we are met by 1LT.Cross, who is carrying letters from a girl back home named “Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey” (O’brien 1-2) who he has deep feelings for but she does not feel the same for him. O’brien depicts this story as a love story because he wants the readers to feel connected to the characters and give them

Love is a powerful force, and Lieutenant Cross sometimes gets lost in his musings while thinking of Martha. O’Brien writes: “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.” Like any sane person in his situation, Lieutenant Cross wants to escape – to anywhere else but the war. The war brings terrible experiences – fear, death, hunger, and pain beyond imagination. The only way that Lieutenant Cross can endure these things is by escaping to an imaginary life with Martha. Although to her, he is little more than a friend, to Lieutenant Cross, Martha represents innocence, perfection, and a world free from war.

Through the exchange of letters between Lt. Jimmy Cross and the center of his infatuation Martha in “The Things They Carried”, he allowed himself to become more obsessed with the thought of her. The letters simply state the events Martha encounter in her daily life, lines

Jimmy's transformation begins when he decides to burn the pictures and letters of his girlfriend, Martha. To be a leader in war was meaningless to Jimmy Cross compared to the love he had for Martha. Cross' subsequent burning of Martha's letters suggests that he's determined to put such romantic ideas behind him. He repeatedly convinces himself that there will be no more fantasies about Martha. The burning of Martha’s things is symbolically used by O’Brien to signify a turning point in Cross’ development. Cross realizes that Martha's feelings for him were not those of love, for she is an English major, a girl who lives in the world of words. Cross was rationalizing his un-requiting love for Martha to create a “home world” inside his mind so that he could mentally escape from the war when he needed to.

In “The Things They Carried,” Lieutenant Jimmy Cross became enamored with an infatuation of a beautiful girl named Martha without realizing the full implications this daydreaming will have on his future and the future of the men serving under him. Cross didn’t realize as he went off to war, that the one he longed for, would end up costing him so much more than he bargained for. It would weigh him down more than any physical “hump” [load such as gear that men at war carry on their person] could (102). “He felt shame. He hated himself.

The main character in the book Lieutenant Jimmy Cross (Tim O’brien) was in love with a woman named Martha. He had flashbacks of time they were together, and he wishes he would’ve touched her more. He also licked the letters where she licked because he missed her. Which were all things men did, to separate them from the terrifying world they were living in, called

Cross begins as a romantic squad leader, not towards his squad members, but towards a person that is unaffected by the war. Cross begins talking about the “letters [he received] from a girl named Martha” (O’Brien 1). As the story progresses Cross begins to change from

Allegra Fritz Professor Wise English 101B 11/12/17 Many people have experience hard times, we each deal with them in different ways. In Tim O’Brien’s “They Things They Carried”, a man’s true love for a woman appears to be making him weak during the war. Some would argue that it is mind over matter, but when you are put into situations where you are mentally and physically weak your morals may begin to waver. Lieutenant Cross did not take the war seriously. He let his fellow soldiers throw away their life lines, he allowed drugs, and sing songs in the middle of the combat.

During the war, women are used to reflect society’s abandonment of the soldiers through their insensitivity that ultimately leaves the soldiers to fight alone. For Lieutenant Cross, Martha writes long letters back and forth with him, but rarely do they ever speak of Cross’s life in battle. Merely, the only time war is mentioned is to say, “Jimmy, take care of yourself” (2). Considering the pages and pages of writing that Martha writes regarding her life, she does not put in the effort to ask about Cross, who risks his life every day. Simply, she tells Cross to