the things they carried

I have to say that the story The Thing they carried is a very deep emotional story about war and is effect on people. It explores not only the material objects they carried but also emotional baggage they have with little to no hope of ever being able to set it down. The main character of the story, Jimmy Cross, is the main focus of this insight. He is a young man who was living a peaceful, college life before being forcibly thrust into a completely pointless war at the jungles of Vietnam. He gets made lieutenant of a squad of men in a similar position as his own despite having no military experience only because he has a college education. The young lieutenant from the beginning of the story clearly wishes to have nothing to do with the war in Vietnam. He had a girlfriend named Martha before the beginning of the war who he was hopelessly in love with. He spends a lot of his time and energy thinking about her and generally obsessive over her. Some of the things he obsesses are weather or not she is still a virgin. The fact that he obsesses over her virginity implies that he maybe a virgin himself. He also wonders and fears weather or not she loves him at all as much as he loves her. He practically worships the letters she sends him as gifts from god. He himself notes that in her letters that she never mentions the war in any of them. In some unconscious level, Jimmy is using her as an escape from the war he is in. He never took the war seriously in the beginning, mostly daydreaming about being back home with Martha away from the war, which is just a hopeful illusion of his. His illusion is shattered forever when one of his squad mates died while he was on lookout duty. The guilt he feels over his squad mate’s death causes him to forsake Martha, burn her letters and picture, and give up any hope of escaping the war in order to focus completely on the mission and the safety of his squad.