The Burdens In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Along with the one hundred or more pounds of gear soldier’s carry in war, they, willingly, carry other things—mementoes, love letters, superstitious comforts. Why? In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, O’Brien describes all of the things that soldiers carry with them, and the significance and reasoning for them. O’Brien’s intention in this excerpt is to compare the physical burdens of the men versus the emotional burdens felt, and to reveal their effects on the men. The theme exposes how First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross—and humans in general—are affected by certain possessions—and memories that are linked with them—and how this dramatically changes his character by the end of the story. O’Brien accomplishes this through the crucial change seen…show more content…
But the men also carry many unorthodox personals, things ranging from mosquito repellant, marijuana, chewing gum, bibles, diaries, etc. All of the things carried depend on their priorities, and constitutions, orders, or areas-of-operations (AO’s). One day, the men are outside the Than Khe area on a mission to destroy tunnels with explosives. They draw straws to see who has to enter and check the tunnels, to be fair. Cross, distracted, imagines the tunnels collapsing on him and Martha, and thinks of whether or not she is a virgin. On the way back from the bathroom, Ted Lavender is shot in the head, falling exceptionally hard under the weight of his pack. Yet, all Cross can think about is Martha, and her poetry and smooth skin. While the soldiers wait for a helicopter to take Lavender’s body away, they laugh about him and try to make light of the situation. Kiowa, who saw Lavender fall, keeps telling everyone how hard he fell. The next morning Cross, who has since taken responsibility in his head for Lavender’s death, crouches in his foxhole to burn Martha’s letters and photos. He makes a dramatic character change, and decides he is no longer going to be lackadaisical about his position as leader. He decides he is no longer putting up with any crap, and is going to be stern and lead his…show more content…
We see him daydream throughout the days; he is distracted, and unable on occasion to properly function because he is so deeply affected by Martha. Yet, by the end we see him reject his own previous character through the symbolic burning of her mementoes. O’Brien uses the scenes involving Martha to bare the change undergone by Cross at the end of the story. These scenes reveal the burden felt by Cross, a conflict between fantasy and reality. When this conflict is realized by Cross it has a huge impact on him, he realizes that he was so obsessed with his fantasy of Martha and what could be, that he was negligent and one of his men died because of it. Cross’s reaction shows how the scenes and horrors of war can make men irrevocably disparaging and disconsolate. Before this event, it seemed all that Cross could think about was Martha, he was constantly dreaming and hoping of things that they could be, things that were happy and trivial. But once he has realized that these thoughts have betrayed him, led him astray and that they, even she, have caused the death of one of his men, he vents his anger the only way he can. He burns all things that remind him of her, he abandons her in an attempt to regain his mental composure. He has learned how devastating they, and she have been. Thus, Cross seems to have become another