Women of The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, American soldiers are fighting a war Vietnam, a country that is halfway across the globe from their home and families. The novel focuses on the experiences of the soldiers including Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Mark Fossie. Since the war is a difficult and isolating experience, both men have a woman at home they seek comfort and assurance from: Martha and Mary Anne Belle, respectively. Lt. Cross and Martha are pen pals whereas Fossie and Mary Anne are childhood sweethearts. Martha and Mary Anne both initially serve as an escape from the war for Lt. Cross and Fossie, however, when Mary Anne comes to Vietnam, she loses her innocence and becomes engulfed in the war and land that surrounds her. In doing so, she destroys Fossie’s fantasy of seeking comfort from her whereas Martha remains the same during the war and can continue to be an escape from reality for Lt. Cross.

When Martha and Mary Anne are first introduced, they are portrayed as sweet and innocence through the description of their clothes and bodies. Even though Martha does not feel the same way about Lt. Cross as Lt. Cross does about her, he still obsesses over her letters, photos, and the memories they shared prior to his deployment. He believes that she is a sweet, innocent girl because in her letters she “often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war” (1). Through her letters such as the one where she told him about finding a pebble on the Jersey shoreline and her beautiful interpretation of its symbolic meaning, he is able to escape the realities of the war to a place in his mind where he is at peace and “would feel himself rising. Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness” (9). The image of Martha and the possibility of having a future with her allow Lt. Cross to not completely succumb to the darkness of the war. Mary Anne plays a similar role for Mark Fossie however instead of providing comfort through words, she is able to provide