“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, Book Review Example

Love or Not: A Reference to The Things They Carried Understanding what Jimmy Cross really felt for Martha

Background of the Story

The story narrated in The Things They Carried specifically discussed the different matters that concerned men living in the war years. Some presented in their younger ages, these soldiers are deemed to have been subjected to courses of living that they never expected to undergo. Being immature as they are, these soldiers tend to retaliate, somewhat deciding to escape from reality through having hopeful daydreams that they think could help them cope up with what they are currently experiencing. Jimmy Cross is one of the soldiers that O’brien tried to describe in his narration. The said soldier has been described to be a young platoon leader, who cared so much for his men, and had strong emotions especially during times when he loses one of them in the war fields. Notably, it could be analyzed through the narrative that Cross tries to be as responsible as he is expected to be especially when it comes to caring for the needs of his men during the war time. However, like many other soldiers, Cross had his own reasons to be sad. As he himself mentioned “I myself am ready to die, but in no way am I ever going to be ready to kill”. His being in the war was rather forced, like most of the other soldiers in the army. This specific matter gives him the reason to become a bit concerned about how life could have been if he has not been forced into joining the army and staying in Vietnam as he tries to care for the soldiers, who like him, did not completely desired to stay where they currently are. In times like this one, the need to cope was necessary. For Jimmy Cross, the way of coping up from such dire situations could only be responded to by being consistently giving attention to the hopeful condition of being loved and cared for by someone who values him, his life and what he could do. Martha was a young volley ball athlete in Jersey who writes letters to cross. In his mind, she and him could be an item, yet he knows there is no way that this could ever come true. Was it really love that he felt or was it simply a form of infatuation? The discussion that follows shall intend to make extensive definition as to why Cross seemingly fell in love with this distant woman and how this particular emotion cannot be considered as genuine love but a instead should be noted as a form of infatuation.

Understanding Jimmy Cross’ Character

 Jimmy Cross as mentioned earlier is a devoted platoon leader who cares so much for his men more than he actually cares for his own life. Notably, his desire to keep them safe at any cost is his response to the call of duty. This is the reason why when one of his men dies in the field, he feels completely responsible for their death and intently questions his own leadership and later on even questions the reason why he remains in Vietnam for the war. The pains and the sorrows that he continuously sees during the war years specifically pushed him to believe that there is no way that he does belong to the place where he was stationed to serve. Too many deaths often result to constant depression usually resulting from guilt and the incapability to make any changes. This particular emotion drives soldiers into the desire of running far from their assignments and becoming free again, living their lives at the prime of their ages. This is why most of them carried their own items of escape. For Jimmy Cross, it was that photograph of Martha that kept him pushing through. He feels emotionally attached to this woman who he barely knows personally. They keep communicating through letters making him feel as if he was at some point being considered special by the young woman. But was this the real case? If the story is to be further examined, it could be analyzed how Martha was described to be a free woman, an outgoing lady who for some reasons have been assumed to be going out with other men. This particular description imposes that she does not specifically have a different feeling for that of Cross especially that they are far away from each other. The letters she sent were particularly meaningless to her, yet to Cross, it meant everything.

What Martha Symbolizes

Hope and the glimpse of another world, this is what Martha represents in the life of a soldier like Jimmy Cross. As repeatedly mentioned earlier, the soldiers needed some sort of escape. Martha was more of an epitome of the outside world apart from the war arena that Cross knows of. Seeing deaths happening right in front of his very eyes probably creates a certain course of difficulty for this soldier hence pushing him to hope for something different. Martha’s letters and stories provide such change. Somehow, reading through her letter bring Cross back to the days when he did not need to assume leadership, when he lived life with free will simply considering his own desires. He loved the fact that Martha’s letters provides him with such vision when all seems to be deeming enough to have hope of becoming more indulged into a better sense of life itself.

Martha therefore was more than just a woman to Cross, she was his focus of attention, his practicable source of hope, the possibility why he is able to dream further amidst all the situations he had to contend with in his own platoon. Was he in love with her? Relatively, love was considered to be the form of emotion that describes how a man like Cross who lives far from Martha could think about her almost all the time. However, there is a slight difference that separates love from infatuation and this is to be further described in the section that follows.

Infatuation versus Love

Infatuation and love are both noted as strong forms of emotions. Nevertheless, each of these emotional bearings has its own characteristic that separates one from the other. Infatuation for example involves constant thinking of one individual about another not for reasons of affection but at some point sourced out from passionate desire. Considerably though, love is a more in depth form of emotion that puts one in a conditional perception of seeing the other individual in a more in depth concern other than passionate desire, specifically thinking of more in depth memories that they could both share together. In the case of Jimmy cross, it could be noticed how the emotional bearing of his thoughts about Martha was later on revealed when he finally met with the woman again [as based from the story he told O’brien when they met after the war years]. He mentioned how Martha was never married and decided to serve as a nurse with a mission. He also told O’brien how he mentioned that he burned her photograph when Lavender died because of guilt and how she replaced such photograph with another identical one which she specifically requested not to be burnt. Along with this, he was also able to mention how his sexual advances to Martha made her feel disturbed and quite irritable pushing her to end the conversation. At this point, it could be noticed how the desires and passion of Cross was rather more physical than sincere emotional connection thus suggesting that what he felt was more of an infatuation than love.

Conclusion

It should be realized that in the story of The Things they Kept, the soldiers had to have something to hold on to so as to be able to keep their sanity intact in the midst of all the chaotic situations that were happening around them. In this case, being emotionally connected to someone far from them cannot be immediately assumed as there are different cases that could at some point affect the decisions of the said individuals [even considering their emotional bearings on how they see different individuals around them. Jimmy Cross’ exceptional consideration over Martha as a special girl in his life was dictated by his desire to be over with the life in the war arena. It was more of a form of escape than the desire to spend his life with the said lady and live in love together.

References

Charters, Ann (2011). The Story and Its Writer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. pp. 636.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.