lieutenant jimmy cross

They spend a full day looking at old photographs and talking, recalling both good and bad memories of the war. The Lieutenant of the Alpha Company. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the leader of a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam, carries physical reminders of Martha, the object of his unrequited love. This is physically the closest he ever gets to her, although he dreams about her the whole time he is in Vietnam, and possibly it is his laxity that gets Lavender killed. As a result, when he is led into battle with First, Ted Lavender died when he was shot in the head leaving the bathroom. But he doesn’t care about the war and has no desire Lt. Cross is a weak leader because the traditional training he received is at stark odds with what he encounters in-country. Cross is a foil to "O'Brien" because Timmy and Linda share a true love story and Cross and Martha do not. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried. His innocent CliffsNotes study guides are written by real teachers and professors, so no matter what you're studying, CliffsNotes can ease your homework headaches and help you score high on exams. Cross is © 2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the main character of the title story. Jimmy Cross understood this. Cross’s guilt is palpable every time one of his men dies, Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. Like the war, Lt. Cross is characterized by a lack of definite purpose. He is responsible for all of his men on the Alpha Company, but as his soldiers start to die one by one, he begins to feel responsible. Following Lavender’s death he realized “that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (p. 107). … but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers”(O’Brien pg. Lieutenant Cross was so infatuated with Martha that it became a burden; he loved Martha more than he loved his men. The Vietnam War, who’s Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was a soldier together with others, comprised of men of different ages who were moving halfway across the world to conquer foreign troops in strange and unfamiliar environment. This is t… from your Reading List will also remove any As character represents the profound effects responsibility has on those who are too immature to handle it. of a group’s or their own savior. For example: Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, carried letters from a girl named Martha. The nature of the Vietnam War, however, makes this kind of leadership impossible because the steps to achieve the objective of the war are undefined and obfuscated. Jimmy Cross is the First Lieutenant who carries “the responsibility for the lives of his men” (O’Brien 429). By loving, therefore, he actively resists his duty as a leader — he withdraws from leadership and Vietnam. don’t have to bear the brunt of the guilt and confusion. Cross suffers for the sake of the entire platoon. Cross is a young soldier, drafted like many others, and committed to the war effort and getting his men out alive. He jealously guards a photograph of Martha, a girl who is not his girlfriend, to maintain a strong link to love and his life at home. confession to O’Brien, years later, that he has never forgiven himself Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is reminiscing about a girl named Martha whom he knew back home. You can view our. 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