Jimmy Cross Symbolism

Stories of war often seem unrealistic when the reader has not experienced anything of the sort. In the story "The Things They Carried" Tim O'Brien tells war stories through a character named Jimmy Cross. With the detail O'Brien uses in his book he must have experienced these events to be able to describe them in such a fashion. The many friendships and personal relationships Jimmy had could have just been O'Brien's platoon he served with and actual girlfriend, possibly with different names. All of the feelings and emotions of a person who truly went to war are spread out into this book. If it is actually O'Brien's past maybe this was the best way for him to put the memories of his friends dying out in the open and help him stop thinking about
all of the death and despair he experienced. At one point he said most of the story is mostly made up. Even though the book is classified as fiction, the confusion between reality and fiction makes you think how much of the story is real because O'Brien seems to tell his own stories through his characters. Jimmy Cross was the lieutenant in his platoon so if any of his men died he would immediately take the blame so nobody else had to. "When a man died, there had to be blame, Jimmy Cross understood this (O'Brien). The first tragic death in this story was Ted Lavender. Jimmy's men were ordered to stop and search a small tunnel which meant one had to go in and search it while the others took somewhat of a break. The one soldier, Lavender, was known to be scared so he would pop tranquilizers to calm himself down. He was shot in the head while walking back to the platoon after going to the bathroom. Jimmy is no longer going to be lenient when it comes to his platoon(O'Brien 25). When his death is described it is as if O'Brien witnessed it and felt it was almost his fault because it was a preventable death. He wrote, "He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone"(O'Brien 12). After Lavender was shot the text changes to a flash back. The change in time shows that when O'Brien witnessed that first person he wanted to forget it immediately and think about anything other than his friend dying. He makes the reader read about something else so they don't have to keep thinking about the death, it's just a distraction. Possibly when he was writing the story he didn't want to talk about his friends death and decided to think about anything else he could remember involving his platoon. He had "never forgiven himself for lavender's death"(O'Brien 27). Throughout the beginning of the book Jimmy thinks about his girlfriend Martha back home. He has a picture of her playing volleyball which he pulls out to look at every once in a while. Some of the thoughts he has are somewhat strange and specific for a fictional character. He repeatedly thinks about how after a date with her he should have taken her to her room, tied her to the bed, and touched her knee all night(O'Brien 5). He regrets not taking action and thinks if he would've done it she might have loved him more. While Jimmy went to war he kept a small stone from the beach Martha gave to him. He puts the stone in his mouth when his platoon relocates or if he just needs to calm down. It reminded him of Martha and the ocean which is what kept him calm. The letters Jimmy receives from Martha seem to have lost their touch. He can't sense the love in her words and thinks she might have gotten over him. "He hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love"(O'Brien 24). He didn't need her pictures anymore so he burned them.(O'Brien 23) The war can take a major toll on anyone who is involved.
It affects the mind and can change a person entirely. O'Brien says that "War is boring"(O'Brien 34). While this is true, others think "It is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love"(Evans 3). Sometimes the troops would feel like they are "fighting two different wars"(O'Brien 63). This can mean many different things including the war of staying alive, trying to stay the same person they used to be, the war of sanity. "O'Brien's soldiers are people who live in extremis"(Evans 2). Somehow these people complete their missions while possibly not wanting to be part of the group and situation entirely. At one point Jimmy thought "all I wanted was to live the lifestyle was born to, a mainstream life"(O'Brien 51). Most soldiers don't want to be in the position they are, even if they disagree, a part of them wants to live a normal life a be at home. War can seem everlasting. "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever"(O'Brien 76). But "in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do"(O'Brien 85). O'Brien knows what war means to him because he experienced it first hand. It takes many qualities to be a living war veteran. They
need to know what they are fighting for. They need to have determination, strength, love, and courage. "Courage...comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital"(O'Brien 40). "The truth of this war, and all wars, is found in the ambiguities, not the Silver Star heroics"(Parini 249). In the book "The Things They Carried" Tim O'Brien is "struggling to relate true stories of his experiences during the war; he notes, "I want you to feel what I felt.
I want you to know why story truth is truer than happening truth". The cycle demonstrates a theme common to O'Brien's work: the importance of story telling and the accumulation of stories as means of perceiving and interpreting a seemingly incomprehensible world"(Werlock 324). These stories and experiences all happened with his friends and platoon soldiers during the war. Without those companionships O'Brien wouldn't have kept his sanity in the slightest. A perfect example of a war companion is Mitchell Sanders, who was also a soldier in Cross's platoon. Sanders influences Jimmy, who is actually O'Brien, in a fatherly way. These fatherly qualities include having a devoted life style and he is also a kind person with an unbreakable sense of justice. They do have a difference though by having their idea of storytelling not being very similar. Despite having clashing ideas of storytelling, Mitchell's ability to tell his stories and discuss the nuances between himself and Jimmy make a permanent impression on O'Brien. Kiowa, Jimmy Cross's closest friend during the war, was a perfect example of rational, quiet morality a midst the horrors of war. In the book "The Things They Carried" Kiowa eventually dies after the platoon accidentally camps in the middle of a sewage field. Although it was a very traumatizing
experience for O'Brien to live though, he knows that Kiowa death shows just how unforgiving the war is which gives his death more prominence than his life.