They Things They Carried. Explication

Jimmy Cross shows his emotions towards Martha right at the beginning of the novel by sharing to us the following:

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

One of the most overlooked aspects in the life of a soldier is the weight of the things they carry. In Tim O'Brien's story, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien details the plight of Vietnam soldiers along with how they shoulder the numerous burdens placed upon them. Literally, the heavy supplies weigh down each soldier -- but the physical load imposed on each soldier symbolizes the psychological baggage a soldier carries during war. Though O'Brien lists the things each soldier carries, the focal point centers around the leader, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and his roles in the war. Lt. Cross has multiple burdens, but his emotional baggage is

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

Something tells me that Martha did love Jimmy, but he was saying all of these things that countered that because he kept second guessing her love. Maybe she did not want to talk about war because it made her upset, maybe he thought she should have a better life being with a non-military sort of guy. When Jimmy said, “Because he knew she had boyfriends” (356), maybe she just had friends that were boys? These types of situations are relatable, and O’Brien shows that very easily, even if it is in a 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.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds.

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

In "The Things They Carried," O'Brien made reference to the Vietnam war that was closely associated with the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers beared.  The overall method of presentation of this story incorporated many different outlooks on the things the soldiers carried, dealt with, and were forced to adapt to.  In addition to this, O'Brien showed us the many reasons why and how the soldiers posessed these things individually and collectively and how they were associated directly and indirectly.  The strong historical content in "The Things They Carried" helped emphasize the focus of the story and establish a clearer understanding of details in the

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.

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).

pictures of her. He would read the letters at the end of a long day in a foxhole he dug. He would sometimes lick the seal of the envelope because he knew that Martha’s tongue had been there. This obsession distracts Cross from the war and from his platoon.

The Vietnam War. A war that many Americans believed unfair and unnecessary. “Why am I being sent off to fight in a war I don’t know anything about? Will I ever return again?” Many draftees asked themselves these questions hoping to find comfort in the answers. But there was little to no hope, and they knew it. They were being drafted and they could do absolutely nothing about it, only hope that at the end they would be returning to the enlightened faces of their loved ones, something that not many Vietnam soldiers expected to ever see again. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, portrays his experience in the war along with his fellow squad members, in their fight for survival against the Vietcong. In The Things They Carried, each

"Then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder is Martha was a virgin." He recognizes the ideas that she may not be a virgin, and even acknowledges that there are other men in her life. Jimmy knows that Martha has many boyfriends, and when he receives a picture from her in the mail, wonders who the photographer was. He treasures the picture and takes it everywhere with him, and yet the small shadow in the picture of the man taking it seems to be his focal point. He wants to focus purely on his unrequited love for Martha, but he can't. He seems to force himself to understand that she does not actually love him. She will never be his, and he knows that somewhere inside him, but continues to imagine that the love that she signs at the end of her letters is really a romantic love.

Lieutenant Cross uses Martha as an escape from the reality of the war. Lieutenant Cross fantasizes about romantic trips with Martha to beautiful places as he trudged through swamps and forests. In, the evening Cross reads letters from Martha and contemplates her feelings for him. The thought of Martha is so prevalent in Lieutenant Cross’s head, the war is hardly mentioned in the first few pages of the story. Even when Ted Lavender dies, it only takes up one sentence, before transitioning back to Martha. Even though she fills him with doubt, worry, love and longing; Lieutenant Cross would rather focus on Martha than the possibility of death. Martha is representative of the emotional baggage soldiers carry, “To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Marth up the hills and through the swamps” (O’Brien 5). O’Brien, is showing readers that Lieutenant Cross is not only carrying the weight of his gear, but also the weight of his love for Martha. His love for Martha weighs heavy on his heart, and his thoughts about her seems to become an obsession. @