Things They Carried

Martha was Jimmy Cross’ first “love”. He was obsessed with her even though she only thought of him as a friend. They wrote each other letters in a friendly way but Jimmy Cross thought of it as more than that. “He would sometimes taste the envelopes flaps, knowing her tongue had been there… More than anything he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love.” (1)

Linda was O’Brien’s childhood love. She died at the age of nine because of a brain tumor. Linda is the main reason why O’Brien believes that story telling is one way to recover from emotional destruction. Every night after Linda’s death he would have dreams about her that reassured him that the dead is still alive. “And as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body- her life.” (223) “But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. In a story miracles can happen.” (224)

Kathleen is O’Brien’s daughter. O’Brien takes his daughter to Vietnam to visit all of the places he went to as a soldier. O’Brien now has a different perspective on how to tell his war stories. He feels he can’t tell Kathleen the truth because she is too young to understand. He doesn’t know how to tell her he killed a Vietnamese soldier. O’Brien can lie to his audience but he can’t lie to his daughter. “I tried to find something to tell her, but finally I shrugged and said it’s a mystery, I guess. I don’t know.