Lieutenant Jimmy Cross Literary Analysis

In Tim O’Brien’s famous short story, “The Things They Carried”, the story follows a group of soldiers lead by Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. This story takes place during the Vietnam War and Lieutenant Cross spends most of his time fantasising about home and the girl of his dreams, Martha. However when one of the soldiers under his command, Ted Lavender, is killed by a sniper, Cross realizes that he has to put aside his desire to go home and focus on leading his men and keeping them alive. Theme is “its idea or point (formulated as a generalization).” (DiYanni 90). Single effect is “its totality of effect or impression -- we read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement and depression.” (Poe 163). O’Brien uses characters, symbols, and settings to cause the reader to feel empathy and to indicate that soldier's possessions told who they are as a person as well as to show how they were likely to react under stressful situations in war. …show more content…
In Tina Chen’s essay, “`Unraveling the deeper meaning': Exile and the emboided poetics of displacement in Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried'”, Chen explains that “the subsequent death of Ted Lavender jolts him into awareness, forcing the realization that the romantic fantasies produced by an exilic consciousness longing to return home to America are unable to meet the exigencies of combat experience in Vietnam.” (Chen 86). Chen is helping the reader to see that due to Lavender’s death, Lieutenant Cross comes to realize that it is time for him to grow up and stop thinking about Martha and to start focusing on the war and