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“It All Comes Together”
Different stories have various types of endings. Fairy tales always end up with the princess marrying the prince; mysteries end with the detective catching the villain; romance ends up with two people falling in love. Some readers like the stories based on historical events. The endings in these stories generally end up with a character accomplishing a feat or coming to some sort of realization about something. One such story by Tim O’Brien ends with this reality. “The Things They Carried” has an ending that climaxes when the mixtures of emotions love, death, and guilt all come together.
Jimmy Cross only has letters and pictures to remember his love for Martha. O’Brien tells the readers of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’ love for Martha, a love that consumed him. Thoughts of Martha frequently filled his mind. Daydreams of Martha and himself lying on the beach together kept his mind off the war and put him in his own imaginary world. This love diverted his reality of his life; that of being at war. “Slowly a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.” (99) Cross found himself mixed up in emotion when it came to Martha. He loved her with all of his heart and constantly fantasized about her, but he knew she didn’t feel the same way.
Soldiers at war have to deal with death on a daily basis which leads Cross’ soldiers to suppress their emotions to deal with this reality. O’Brien writes “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but intangibles has their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (108) Death changes a solder. Cross’s solders all told jokes after the death of Ted Lavender. This was their way of making themselves deal with the loss of a close friend and soldier. “Zapped while zipping” (107) is...