The Ghost Soldiers Character Analysis

In the chapter The Ghost Soldiers O’brien writes about his experiences as a wounded soldier in the war. He mentions being shot twice, once in the side and once in the butt. As O’brien tells his stories you can notice a significance in which injury was the hardest for him to deal with. When he got shot the first time in the side, the field Medic Rat Kiley got to him almost immediately and tended to his wounds. The second time he was shot there was a new medic, named Bobby Jorgenson and O’brien mentions that, “it took the son of a bitch almost ten minutes to work up the nerve to crawl over to me”(O’brien 181). In that moment of the story the readers are able to sympathize with O'brien's deep feeling of anger and perhaps even betrayal. As a soldier …show more content…
Ted Lavender was described as young and scared. He would often pop tranquilizers in an attempt to distract himself from the war. Ted was the first to die in the story, his like Curt Lemon’s represents the expendability of human life in a pointless war. The character that seemed most distraught over Lavender’s death was Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. When Lieutenant Cross is first introduced into the story he seems like he's a creep. He’s in love with a girl named Martha, that isn't even remotely interested in him. On top of that he isn’t the most attentive person, which isn’t a good thing when you’re in charge during a war. Jimmy Cross spends most of his time thinking about Martha, writing to her, or staring at her picture. When Ted gets shot in the head Jimmy blames himself for not being more attentive to the kid. In the story Tim says that ‘[the Lieutenant] felt shame, he hated himself, he had loved Martha more than his men and as a consequence Lavender was now dead”(O’Brien 16). Ted Lavender was shot when while he was returning from using the bathroom, as a Lieutenant, Cross should have sent someone to cover Ted, but he was too busy thinking about Martha to think about the wellbeing of his troops. As a result of his actions Cross would likely spend the rest of the war feeling responsible for the death of Ted Lavender. Lieutenant Cross recognized that Martha had been drawing his attention away from the war, so he did the most sensible thing in his head, he decided to let go of Martha and accept that she didn’t love him. To be able to fully let go Jimmy decided to “[burn] Martha’s letters, then he burned the two photographs”(O’Brien 22). The way that Jimmy decided to cope with his feeling of guilt may have seemed extreme to some, but to Jimmy it was just what he needed. His was of coping, as unethical as it might seem, worked to some extent. In the future stories, O’Brien no