The story starts out describing Lieutenant Cross’s relationship with Martha, a girl back home who he loves, but does not reciprocate his feelings. The story tells about how he carries her letters, and though there are no signs of romantic feelings in the letters Cross projects love and fantasy into them. O’Brien also describes the necessities and personal items the soldiers carry. He uses the personal items to identify and personalize each character. For example, the illustrated New Testament that Kiowa carried, along with his hunting hatchet he received from his grandmother that symbolized his distrust for “the white man”. Or the toothbrush, dental floss, and soap that Dave Jensen carried because he practiced field hygiene. Their ponchos, P-38 can openers,

Throughout the story Cross is obsessed with his fantasy of Martha and he neglects his duties as leader and lieutenant. He practices loose control of his troops and enforces little to no discipline. As a result, the troops behave carelessly and use ammo and weapons recklessly. “They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched…not knowing what to look for, not caring… blowing tunnels… sometimes setting fires and sometimes not …” (O’Brien, p. 519). The soldiers felt they had no purpose or reason for being at war. They did not care. The only steady unchanging thing they had was the burden of things to carry as the story shows, “… and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at loss for things to carry.”(O’Brien, p. 519). They did not care, but they were too afraid of showing and cowardice, dishonor, or fear to walk out or run away. O’Brien writes, “…they flopped around… and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop…. Afterward, when the firing ended… They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it.”(O’Brien, p. 521). This entails that the men felt they had the inexcusable obligati

Some topics in this essay:
Dave Jensen, Lieutenant Cross, , Lieutenant Cross’s, Testament Kiowa, physical weight, death causes cross, pictures martha, causes cross, personal items, honor bravery, relationship martha, death causes,