The Things They Carried
...r, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love.” (O'Brien, 2005, pg. 410) Jimmy Cross also carried photographs of Martha, just as the other soldiers often carried photographs. He would look at these photographs and wonder who had taken the photographs, and he also thought of things he had done with Martha and then he would think of new things that he should have done with Martha that in his mind could have made a difference in how things were between them. Tim O’Brien describes Cross’s feelings when looking at the photographs, ”The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the picture-taker spreading out against the brick wall” (O'Brien, 2005, pg.412) Martha sent Lieutenant Cross a pebble she had found on the Jersey shore while walking. He had trouble concentrating on what was going on around him once he received this pebble from her. His mind wandered to thoughts of romance and he imagined himself with her on the Shore. Tim O’Brien describes how his mind wandered away from his duties in the following quote from the story, “He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.”(O'Brien, 2005, pg.414) At the end of the story, you realize that Cross is using thoughts of Martha as an escape from what is going on around him. He doesn’t even realize this himself until one of the soldiers’ “Ted Lavender” dies in the line of duty. It is then that he realizes that Martha belongs elsewhere and not in the world he is now living and that he needs to concentrate on being in the here and now. He needs to concentrate on ensuring the safety of his soldiers and doing his job to the best of his ability. Tom O’Brien clearly illustrates this in hi...