Ted Lavender's Death In The Things They Carried

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was a character with many layers that he never actually showed. He had emotions that he kept inside him, and he was never truly focused on the war. He rarely talked to the other soldiers about how he felt about the war. Cross was burdened with responsibility and guilt. He blamed himself for the death of his soldiers, and he blamed himself for Martha not loving him the way he loved her. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a important character that is seriously affected by the war, and has conflicted

Cross carried Martha's letters in his backpack and after a long day of marching he would unwrap her letters and imagine her loving him back.”First lieutenant Jimmy cross letters from A girl named Martha a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey they were not love letters but the lieutenant was hoping so he kept them folded in a plastic bag at the bottom of his backpack”(page1). Martha signs the bottom of the letters “love Martha” but cross knows that means nothing by that he encountered during the war due to the fact that he had the good token

He begins by explaining that Jimmy Cross has an obsession, and her name is Martha. “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack” (pg. 1, line 1). Although Jimmy Cross wished they were love letters he would still continue to go crazy about them. ”He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.” (pg.1, line 9) Jimmy Cross could not wait to see Martha as he continued to constantly have her on his mind. While constantly thinking about Martha, Lavender continues to be briefly mentioned then after, Jimmy Cross starts blaming himself for the death of Lavender, but the platoon knows they must move on, as the emotional effect of this story begins to lean towards the physical state of mind on the war, such as the weapons and explosives. This starts to calm down the narrator and his emotional level, however the constant reminder of not seeing Lavender, triggers his emotions and finally continues to bring up more detail about what happened after the death. This brings out the more emotional side of the story and the narrator explains what Lieutenant Cross thinks about the death of Lavender since he could not stop thinking

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.

"Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her" (O'Brien 6).

Yet, when Lavender is killed in action, Cross becomes disgusted with himself for having let his infatuation for Martha result in his negligence. His act of burning the letters serves as his way to distance himself from love. There is an inherent sense of disillusionment with the fantasy of love and the lives they hope to lead afterward once the men have been met with reality.

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.

Initially, O’Brien highlights Cross’s thoughts of love and emotional feelings as he describes the experience of war. Cross constantly thinks about Martha and how much he loves her, and though he senses her uninvolvement, he

In the story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, Lt. Cross is a young soldier who like many others was drafted into the war. Though he is the leader of the Alpha Company, he doesn’t show it, he is not emotionally nor patriotically devoted. Lt. Cross was distracted from the war that was going on by his feelings for Martha whose letters and photos were a fantasy to him. “Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done” (O’Brien 470). As the war goes on Cross becomes a dynamic character. The death of Ted Lavender served as a reality check to Lt. Cross and he began to

"... but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing. He would feel himself rising. Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness." This quote from page 9 from the chapter The Things They Carried shows us that his mind is always distracted and on Martha, even when he is supposed to be watching over the land and fighting. He keeps his letters from her on all times, always hoping that the 'Love, Martha' she signs at the end of them means something more than it actually does, reading them so much to the point that he can remember what they say without looking at them. "First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastion College in New Jersey. In the late afternoon, after a long day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her

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.

Eventually, his constant thoughts of Martha lead him to be “distracted” causing one of his soldiers to get killed. The violent event causes him to lash against himself and constantly terrorizes him. This scene shows how the violent death of a soldier affects those who survived and haunts them repeatedly. In Jimmy Cross’s case it leads him to resent Martha for being a distraction to him, so he destroys the image he had of her and replaces it with guilt and hatred. O’ Brien says, “He felt shame.

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).

O’Brien continues later, explaining that Cross no longer carried the photos and letters from Martha in the hopes that, without them, he would be less distracted and better able to focus on the safety of his men. The singular event of Lavender’s death changed the way that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross looked at the war and how he ran his platoon for the remainder of their tour. Had Lavender still been alive, Cross would have continued to be focused on his love for Martha more than his own men and could have lost more than just Lavender in the next

The death of Ted Lavender was a shifting point for the the platoon and its Lieutenant Jimmy