The Things They Carried By Tim O'brien

2 Pages 582 Words

Tough Love in “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien


In Tim O’Briens “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien describes the
blind obsession of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross for a young girl named Martha, a junior
at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. Burdened by the physical and psychological aspects of the Vietnam War, Cross often finds himself daydreaming and distracted by thoughts about her. Out one day on another one of their seemingly meaningless missions, Cross and his men are investigating tunnels near the Village of Than Khe. As a result of Cross’s negligence, Private Ted Lavender gets shot in the head. Consequently, Cross destroys all of Martha’s letters and photos because he is angry with his own carelessness, and he feels so burdened with the blame of Lavenders death. Cross realizes that he spends more time thinking about Martha than thinking about the well being of his men.

Cross realizes that it is not his job to be loved. It is his job to lead. Cross
makes the decision to become less emotional and to enforce discipline and respect
among his soldiers. In many ways the death of Ted Lavender makes cross a better
soldier; it helps him prioritize what his duties are, to keep himself and his men
alive. He now distances himself from the other soldiers. “They would get their
shit together and keep it together”(718).
All the letters and pictures of Martha are gone, but not from his memory; he
can still see her face, and he can still see her in her white gym shorts. Cross is not
through with love, he just has to refocus his emotions from daydreams of Martha to
the will to survive. Cross knows that if he doesn’t change that he and his men will
will end up dead. He knows what he has to do as a commanding officer. He has to
get rid of the daydreams and the fantasies of a love that he knows is fictional. The
simple facts are that he has to s...