Preview

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
867 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross
Many people tend to overlook the great obstacles and combats that our soldiers put themselves into in order to keep us safe,but have they looked deeper into the minds of each soldier and the story they carry. In the book The Things They Carried Tim O`Brien helps convey the true characteristics of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross throughout not only the Vietnam War but through the mental battle he suffers everyday dealing with the sorrows he carries.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, was the leader of the Alpha Team during the Vietnam War, and contributed to not only being the man to look upon, but the man the team must have counted on to bring hope towards each and every one of their sorrows. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, an Alpha Company Leader, carries navigational tools illustrative of the
…show more content…
It is not a surprise to feel any sort of putty towards the people that are in control of keeping safety among citizens but knowing how Jimmy may have taken the love concept to the wrong setting has taken its toll on his purpose at war. Jimmy has not only taken the guilt of having his loved one at home but also the mental illness of watching his fellow soldier Lavender die. The extravagant breakdown going through his mind at the time might have been twirling around his head trying to comprehend everything that has been going on then for him to finally realize his Soldier is dead. Throughout the story Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has also been shot. O’Brien describes Jimmy as a “fool” in the story to the way he expressed his traumatic experience of being shot at in combat. Jimmy loses his mental personality; his mind had been thrown out to no mans’ land and he had been left alone wondering what had happened to him. Lieutenant Cross could not bring upon his mentality and emotions into the picture but could only chose from either of those to be present at the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    War! Seems like every where we turn anymore you hear a story about war. The story of “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien takes place during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien narrated the story, and is writing from first hand experiences. This story gives you a good insight of how soldiers think during such difficult times. Throughout this story you’ll see how love can affect a person’s judgment even during a war.…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plot summary: First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is in love with a junior in college named Martha while he is in the middle of a war in Vietnam. While he travels around, he and Martha write letters to each other, in which he writes with love and she just writes back as a friend. Throughout the story, O’Brien lists all of the supplies they all carry, such as guns, knives, and ammunition. It is also revealed that the men in Jimmy Cross’s platoon carry objects that reveal their personalities as well. One morning Cross and his men come across a tunnel. It is Lee Strunk’s turn to search it so he goes…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story is told by an omniscient narrator focusing mainly on the character First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Lieutenant Cross is in charge of a company of men who go on daily marches through Vietnam in search for the enemy, their sympathizers and supplies. He often daydreams of a college girl he is fond of back in New Jersey. Mitchell Sanders is the radio and telephone operator and known for being the ladies’ man. Kiowa is a Native American Baptist who carries an Illustrated New Testament with him. He also carries his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet given to him by his father and his grandmother’s distrust for the white man. Dan Jensen practices field hygiene by having with him a toothbrush, dental floss and bars of soap stolen from a hotel while on R&R. Henry Dobbins is a large man who carried extra rations and was excused from searching tunnels due to the size of his frame. He carries the M60, is especially fond of canned peaches, and wears his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck as god luck. Rat Kiley is the medic, carrying a canvas satchel containing morphine, plasma, malaria pills and various medical supplies and comic books. Norman Bowker is a gentle guy, he keeps a diary with him and carries a thumb from a VC corpse that Mitchell Sanders had cut off and presented to him. Lee Strunk has a…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    and off the battlefield. Beneficial to the Lieutenant, his meaningful affections for the junior college…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The story starts off by putting the reader into Jimmy Cross’ mind. Cross is the leader of the group that the book follows around Vietnam, he is only 24 or 25 years old and at towards the end of the book says he is not suited for the job at all. Cross occupies his mind all day with his beloved Martha, a woman from back home who has absolutely no romantic interest in Cross at all. He reads her letters, stares at her picture, keeps a pebble she sent in his mouth, and fantasizes about tying her to his bed and touching her knee all night. As though his confession of being an unfit leader was not enough he also gives away his inner most thoughts to the reader revealing just how incompetent he is. One day while fantasizing about Martha one of the men, Lavender, is shot in the head, Cross blames himself for the Lavender’s death and never lets it go. He burned Martha’s pictures and letters, and even threw away the pebble she sent him to help him focus on the safety of his men. Even 20 years later when Cross visits O’Brien, a fellow soldier and main storyteller of our novel, Cross is still full of guilt over Lavender’s death and obsessed with the uninterested Martha. “At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he 'd never forgiven himself for Lavender 's death. It was something that…

    • 1404 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first chapter of The Things They Carried, “The Thing They Carried”, Tim O’Brien uses the motif of intangible weights the men carry and how they have the strength to alter one's performance and emotional state at war. The intangible weight of Martha's love is like a barbell Jimmy Cross can never seem to let go of. Continuously carrying extra weight, Cross expresses how he "love[d] Martha more than his men" (6), which results in the death of one of his men soldiers Ted Lavender. Cross’s love for Martha distracts him from his responsibility as a lieutenant to have the backs of and “love” (6) his men. The intangible weight of Martha's love that he can't return distracts Cross from his duty as a lieutenant. Being distracted from his responsibilities…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tim O’Brien is a very gifted author, but he is also a veteran of the Vietnam War and fought with the United States in that controversial war. Tim O’Brien was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968. He served as an infantryman, and obtained the rank of sergeant and won a Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel. He was discharged from the Vietnam War in 1970. I believe that O’Brien’s own images and past experiences he encountered in the Vietnam War gave him inspiration to write the story “The Things They Carried.” O’Brien tells the story in third person narrative form about Lt. Jimmy Cross and his platoon of young American men in the Vietnam War. In “The Things They Carried” we can see differences and similarities between the characters…

    • 1684 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tim O'Brien

    • 1263 Words
    • 6 Pages

    A platoon of seventeen soldiers from America travel in booby-trap swamps and through the hills of Vietnam. “They been ordered to set ambushes, execute night patrols, and search out and destroy the massive tunnel complexes south of Chu Lai constructed by Viet Cong guerrillas” (McCarthy). On their voyage the men carry something with them; the things they carry have a meaning to each soldier which distinguishes them. The men are not completely prepared to deal with the stresses of war emotionally. The story circles around Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the burden he feels for the death of Lavender, one of his soldiers. “The Things They Carried” reflects on each soldier and their way of trying to escape from the war. American writer Tim O’Brien had many outstanding works including “The Things They Carried”. This work illustrates O’Brien’s use of style,…

    • 1263 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    But the soldiers carry more than just physical burdens—in many cases, they are weighed down by emotional baggage. Jimmy Cross thinks that he carried the idea…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jimmy Cross Analysis

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The short story "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien takes place in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In this story we are introduced to First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his platoon. They all differ in age and ethnicity, and have different views on the Vietnam War. One thing that they all have in common is that they bear the weight of their country on their back, but they also have different emotions weighing on their hearts at the same time. We see three different sides to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the soldier, the love stricken man and the leader that has learned a valuable lesson. Each of his characters carries something different.…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He never once describes the men in the war as brave or courageous, he actually talks a lot about their fears and the emotional baggage they carry. The reader soon finds that Jimmy has a girl back home named Martha. He loves her with all his heart but these feelings seem to be unrequited as Martha treats him as a good friend rather than a potential boyfriend or lover. He describes a night when he had taken Martha to a movie and kissing her goodbye that night after taking her home. “Right then, he thought, he should've have done something brave…...He should’ve risked it” (5). This shows how Cross feels that taking risks, even as small as kissing a date goodnight or touching her, are more brave than any mission carried out by the soldiers. Thoughts of their relationship always occupy Cross’s mind and distract him from his duties. His lack of attention costs one man his life, having lasting effects on Cross’s conscience and gives him an eternal sense of guilt over his actions. This showed how emotionally fragile Vietnam soldiers were and the amount of stress and tragedy being put on them on a day to day basis. Another example of this is when Cross’s fellow soldier, Kiowa, dies in an accidental explosion. Cross is found squatting in the muck of a lake, almost in a daze, contemplating the death of all those around him and what it means and who is to blame. He tried to tell himself that “No apologies were necessary, because in fact it was one of those freak things, and the war was full of freaks, and nothing could ever change it anyway. Which was the truth, the exact truth. Lieutenant Cross went deeper into the muck, the dark water at his throat, and tried to [convince] himself it was the truth” (176). This symbolizes the breaking point of Cross and how he really is no longer courageous. He takes tragedies to heart and feels…

    • 991 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Tim tells Jimmy that he’d like to write a story of the events, Jimmy asks Tim to depict him as a good guy, “brave and handsome…best platoon leader ever” (page 29). He is very critical of himself, but this request may have a playful and joking tone to it. The ending is ambiguous, though. Tim cuts Jimmy off before the sentence ends, so readers don’t exactly know what Cross’s long-kept secret is. I sense that it is his guilt of Lavender’s death because he has lived with it for so…

    • 1231 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a result, each time he is led into battle with several men that he is in charge of, he is always hesitant in his actions. Cross’s decisions that led to the deaths of Ted Lavender and Kiowa made Cross dejected and talk down on himself. Each time one of Cross’s men died, he felt a feeling of guilt for the death, but this feeling of guilt was most acute with Ted Lavender’s death. Right before Lavender was killed, Cross became distracted by thoughts of his old classmate, Martha, who frequently sends him photographs and letters. His innocent thoughts are then interrupted by Lavender’s death, which made him come to a personal consensus that he loves Martha more than his men: “Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death.” As a result, Cross started to talk down on himself, leading to his dejected emotions. In addition, Cross felt guilty and constantly blamed himself for the death of Kiowa, who had died by being sucked into a “shit field”: “Jimmy Cross stood very still, afraid to move, yet knowing he had to, and then he murmured to himself, “My fault…” (162). Cross’s constant reminder to himself that Kiowa’s death was his fault also leads to his crestfallen feelings. Although Cross blamed himself for the death of his soldier’s each unit member is able to be held accountable, and each unit member felt guilt as…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The ordeal that a soldier experiences during a war is often unshakable, haunting both memories and the current happenings in one’s life. In the beginning of The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien describes the lasting turmoil both he and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feel as a result of the war: “... Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I feel the same about certain things” (26). The tragedies of war can never be understood by one who has not experienced it, and soldiers must overcome the mental barricade of fitting back into an unknowing society when returning from duty. At times, this mental barricade, combined with the…

    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Autobiographical Memory

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages

    O’Brien uses Cross as the anti-savior, a symbolic metaphor for Jesus Christ, hence his last name Cross. While the men within the platoon can be seen as Cross’s disciples. As a savior you're supposed to be a shepherd to your sheep and lead them away from danger; however, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross does the opposite unknowingly. Jesus Christ carried burdens of others by dying on the cross for them. While, Lieutenant Cross, carried the burden of guilt for his irresponsibility’s that caused the deaths of his platoon members Ted Lavender and…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays