The Economic Way of Looking at Life, Term Paper Example

Jimmy Cross & Me

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a misguided character. He tries to bring about order to his troop but ultimately fails at this; partly because of the nature of war (in particular the Vietnam War), and partly because of his own ineptitude or distracted personality (he focuses a lot of his attention on his girlfriend’s letter to him). Jimmy Cross, essentially is a pretender. He pretends his letters from Martha are love letters; that in some way the words are romantic and he carries this hope into an imaginative world in which he plans romantic camping trips with her in New Hampshire. I feel like in this way I’m very much like Jimmy Cross; not that I’m distracted from life and the realities of it (it can sometimes feel like a war or battle: staying on track every day, having a routine, being responsible for the lives of the people around me, especially my family) but rather that there is something deeper going on in me that claims my attention. I understand how Jimmy Cross feels about wanting to be loved by someone, “More than anything he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her” (1). When love isn’t reciprocated someone’s energy, all of their energy, goes into analyzing why there is not reciprocity.  I find that trying to turn off my brain, to try and not analyze and analyze a situation, is difficult. Jimmy Cross read, and reread those letters, he focused on the envelopes (“He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there” (1)), and this in turn distracted him from the reality of war. I too am in a similar situation. I’m in love; but really, I think I’m fooling myself like Cross, because I don’t think they return this love. So, my days are spent trying to figure out how I can get them to love me; what move or thing I can do or say to get them to change their heart. Cross’ letters were signed “Love Martha” but he knew that he hoped for that word more than the word was intended for. Even the way that Cross cares for the letters (he returns them gingerly to his rucksack) tells the reader how much he wants Martha to love him; it also shows how distracted he is.

Reading the letters is what Cross does first; he does this before he checks the perimeter. Then, after he was done checking his letters, checking his men, checking the perimeter, he would “return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was still a virgin” (2). This is the penultimate showcasing of being distracted. But when I think about the person I love, I think about them wholly and all-consummingly. These thoughts are pervasive: the filter into the shower, at meals, while I’m driving. I have a certain percentage of my attention I give to necessary our routine habits such as driving, eating, talking, but the rest of my attention, upwards of 51% is spent on thinking about love. If Cross and I are so similar then I understand how he failed to keep track of his men (like Lavender) and how some of them didn’t make it through the war. Perhaps, however, each of the men were distracted with something, just like Cross.

Cross’ objective in war is undefined. The men seem to be routing and rerouting around the jungle, going to different villages, getting ambushed in mud, and still not finding their destination, if they even know what or where that is. Cross is supposed to be their leader but is unable to perform his duties with such an elusive and undefined task at hand. I feel like college is the same way; I don’t have a very clear objective in mind, but am just aimlessly going about, paying attention to someone else’s guidance telling me what classes I need to take to graduate and fulfill my major, but not necessarily classes I need to take to survive life (accounting for taxes, gym for health, music so that I know how to be happy). I’m following someone else’s game plan, and sometimes that game plan changes (such as how many credits I need to graduate, what courses I need to take to fulfill my major, what I need to take to satisfy my electives, etc.); and whenever that game plan changes, I veer off course.

Cross went through basic training and this was something that was supposed to prepare him for the field; help him navigate the land, lead his team, be brave. The jungle, the foreign territory of Vietnam, the weather, the language, all of the exotic plants and animals were not part of his training. Cross’ training is at odds with his reality. Cross was trained to march single file, clean his guns, follow maps but not how to talk with locals, keep his men safe in such a foreign place, or how to adapt. I think this last element is the main thing; Cross is unable to adapt. I feel like I’m about to witness this first hand. When I graduate from this school I’m not sure how many (if any) of the lessons I learned in college will translate to the real world. I’ve been taught how to write essays, play sports, and follow a set schedule. The real world is unpredictable and full of caprice. The real world isn’t forgiving, nor does it offer lack of bills. My training in college is much like Cross’ training in boot camp; it’s application to Vietnam aka the real world, is untranslatable.

I’m afraid that, like Cross, I will rely on a false sense of leadership that will allow me to shirk my personal responsibilities. When Lavender is shot in the head, Cross didn’t take any personal responsibility for his death; relying instead of his leadership role. I think this can be seen especially with the things that he carried. Other than Martha’s letters, “Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded” (3). It seems ridiculous to have a compass when he doesn’t know where he’s going (or a college degree if I don’t really know that I want to stick with my major, or what I will do with my major once I graduate); to have maps when the troop gets lost (again, why have a college degree when a factory worker gets paid as much as a person with a BA, but the factory worker doesn’t have any college loans to pay back); code books when out in the jungle it might not even be necessary to use code; binoculars (how can Cross see anything at a distance in a jungle); and a pistol. This particular pistol shoots at close range so it does in a sense make sense, but the point is that they shouldn’t be that close to the enemy anyway if they’re setting up their camps correctly and checking their perimeter. But as can be witnessed by Cross reading his letters from Martha before checking the perimeter, the man’s priorities are elsewhere besides war. I feel this way as well sometimes; that my priorities aren’t being reflected in the thing that I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like burying myself in a daydream like Cross, rather than dealing with my reality. Not that I have a bad reality, I’m just full of indecision and enough common sense to know what I don’t want to do, but not enough to know what I want to do. Cross is distracted from his reality, “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” (4). I’m not so distracted by love that I’ll allow anything to die (metaphorically; like my college career for instance) but I know how distracted I am by this thought, What happens after college. I don’t know, and the not knowing bothers me. I like direction; I’d like to borrow Cross’ compass and use it, because it’s obvious he never did.

Works Cited

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.