Man_vs_Boy

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross, a American soldier in Vietnam, comes into the war a young immature officer who cannot stop thinking about a girl. His tough decisions as a team leader control the fates of all those around him who count on him every hour of every day to lead them. Although he starts off being an immature officer he grows into becoming a true army soilder. Throughout the story, Jimmy Cross, a American soldier, makes it a point to think about his true love Martha, Jimmy is insecure about everything he does and he wonders if he makes the right decisions. His way of escaping is to day dream about Martha. She is an English major at Mount Sebastian, New Jersey and she sends him photos and letters regularly. She writes poetry letters and never mentions the war. Her letters are very friendly, full of all her activities and details of her life. She always signs her letters “Love Martha”(p.232), but she is not in love with him. He knows this but dreams of her and him in a relationship. He carries Martha’s letters with him in a backpack and looks at them every night while dreaming about how his life could be with her intimately. He knew, “ they were signed “love, Martha,” but lieutenant cross understood that”love” was only a way of signing””(p.232). Cross should have been paying more attention to his men, but instead he was daydreaming about Martha. It reveals that he was selfish because he cared more about her, than his men. Cross had a lot of responsibilities as a lieutenant and he was not doing his job. He was endangering the lives of his men by having Martha on his mind too much. “But his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside of her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.” (p.232) This means that he wanted to be really close to her and that he could not get her off his mind. Cross really cared about Martha and wanted to be with her. He was always thinking about her and pretending they were together. He fantasized about being with her intimately.