Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried

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

Some of the personal items that Lieutenant Cross included letters from a Girl named Martha. He carried these because they were light to carry and it gave him something to think about while walking from place to place during the war. He also carried two pictures of Martha on the inside of his wallet, “The first was a Kodachrome snapshot signed Love….. The second had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook”, and a good luck charm that Martha had sent him. It was a pebble that Martha had sent him in the mail.

Like Celie, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross continues to struggle with his past. Despite Jimmy’s emotions hindering his judgement and his ability to stay focused, Lieutenant Cross is still a strong soldier because he is enduring the phycological weight of war. . It takes a strong man to be actively fighting a war for his country. However, being madly in love with his crush Martha is negatively affecting his ability to lead his battalion of men in the Vietnam. Cross’ love for Martha made him feel “paralyzed.” (302) Because of Lieutenant Jimmy’s mentally emotional love, he is not able to physically lead. Lieutenant Cross’s lack of attentiveness results in Ted Lavender a soldier in cross platoon to die. Soldiers see the dead and wounded members of allies,

Tim O'Brien's “The Things They carried” is a story which is about the physical and emotional weight that a soldier carries during a war. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the main character of the story who is a weak soldier who does not want to be in the war, however, he could not withdraw because soldiers were needed to fight the war. Throughout the whole story, Jimmy remembered a girl named Martha, whom he desired to be his girlfriend. In the other hand, because of the remembering Martha, some good and many bad things happened during the war. While Jimmy Cross's love for Martha brought his respite for the war and ultimately proved to be harmful to him, his men and his ability to be an effective leader.

In life, everyone has obligations. People have responsibilities they have to tend to everyday, but sometimes there are passions of love or revenge that makes one stop thinking of what their true responsibilities are. For soldiers fighting in war, their responsibility is to take care of their men and make sure no one gets hurt. They fight for their country and protect the men who have become their family. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross went against his honor to protect his men. He let his responsibly go, which caused one of the men in his group to die. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross confronts the demands of the love for Martha, which conflicts with his responsibility in the war, which affects him and the story.

It was something that symbolized hope for Jimmy during war. Even though going through the reality of war, he chose to keep the love for Martha to most likely get his mind off the terror. Other things he carried were grief and terror of the men who died and might die. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is responsible for him men, probably making him the most effected when something happens to his soldiers. The reality of war is that people die, people are scarred with the experience, and people just give up. Jimmy Cross carries the emotional baggage of grief when his men start to die. He also carries the terror of being there because he is also a soldier in war, fighting and trying to stay alive while trying to keep his men alive as well. These are the intangible things Cross carries but it has tangible weight, effecting

Tim O’Brien is a writer that is able to attract and maintain the attention of readers successfully throughout his books. The writer is dedicated towards highlighting the differences in the desires that people often have in their lives but fail to pursue them in order to fulfill the obligations assigned to them. This research paper proves that the writer’s work is more obligations oriented than desire oriented by highlighting Jimmy Cross’s character in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is dragged off course from his obligations as a leader and protector by his desires for love of thoughts: Comparatively, "Going After Cacciato," O’Brien shows how a platoon of soldiers thoughts of desertion for freedom and obligations to their service. In Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried”, Jimmy Cross is a person who is a lieutenant who is dedicated to his work and ensuring that his people are safe.

I chose to write about Tim Obrien's The Things They Carried because it's the epitome of what exactly the prompt needs and wants. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is an amazing character to analyze. He is clearly obsessed with a girl who has no romantic feelings to him. He is so obsessed that he makes himself worry sick, and forget about the reason why he was there in first place. What makes Jimmy Cross so special is that as a leader, he fall to his desires of love and lust. A common problem that most soldiers find themselves doing. When your deployed or really worried about something, you try to create something to keep you wanting to live on. But just any great leader he was able to wake up and destroy his desires to go on with the mission, and get

The central theme of the story is the age-old conflict of life and death. On a more personal level with First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the round character and protagonist of "The Things They Carried", it is a conflict of love, his antagonist and of war.

In the first chapter in the book, titled The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross is one of the many examples throughout the novel in where a soldier has a way to escape from the realities of war. Cross, who is a lieutenant in his company, carries two photographs of a girl named Martha whom he truly loves and wishes nothing else but to be with her in the end. Along with the photographs, he carries letters from Martha herself as well as her good-luck pebble in his mouth. Martha’s letters has a huge impact on Cross’s escape on reality because those letters do not mention war at all but for him to stay safe. All of these items comforts Cross and eventually reminisce about the times when he was back home with Martha away from any war. He relives a moment when he was with Martha at the movies, and then remembers that he touched her knee but Martha did not approve and pushed his hands away. Now while he’s in Vietnam, he does nothing but fantasizes taking her to her bed, tying her up, and touching that one knee knee all night long.

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries with him a pebble given to him by Martha, a girl with whom he is in love and wishes to be back home with, along with letters and

In "The Things They Carried," violence brings forth an epiphany for First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Lieutenant Cross, while seeking comfort in his imagination, allows one of his men to be shot and killed. His lack of security led to an unnecessary casualty: "[Cross] hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was

In The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross is the lieutenant of his platoon whom feels guilt for his friend’s death. During the war, Jimmy Cross has a girlfriend back home that he always thinks of. Throughout the war, he focused mainly on his girlfriend Martha instead of his fellow soldiers in his platoon. His lack of focus to his fellow soldiers had led to the death of his friend’s, Ted Lavender. Jimmy Cross blames himself for his friend death because he feels like it is his fault for not watching over them. He feels guilty for his friend’s death, and the thoughts of Martha haunt him whenever he thinks about their death. He decides to burn everything that Martha has given him to help him concentrate on the war. However, it doesn’t help him, because he remembers everything that Martha has given him. Still thinking about Martha, he forgets about the war and finds out that his Indian friend Kiowa has died in the sewage field after drowning. Jim Cross started to feel worse about his actions, and felt even more guilty and started to write a letter to Kiowa’s father. This made Jimmy Cross feel unstable about himself because he felt guilty about his actions throughout the war and cannot turn time back.

On the very first page of the book is where the reader experiences an awkward introduction to Martha. The author immediately lets us know that Jimmy Cross has had Martha on his mind for quite some time. The letters are the significant physical object he carries but the thoughts are even heavier. Throughout the book O'Brien explains thoughts that taunt the soldiers

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is told in third person and describes many characters, yet First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is unsound undoubtedly the focus of the story. It is his thoughts and feelings that the reader is given the most insight into. From this, it is easy to see the impact certain events have on him. First, the reader is given a description of a memory when Cross and Martha went to a theater to see Bonnie and Clyde (O'Brien 471). During the movie, it is revealed that Cross placed his hand on Martha's knee, only to be looked at in a "sad, somber way" (O'Brien 471). This seems to be the moment Cross realized that Martha didn't feel the same way he felt for her. Even knowing this, the First Lieutenant still dreamed about