The Things They Carried
~ the below is an excerpt from " The Things They Carried" By Tim O' Brien
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross Carried letters From a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College at New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lta. Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.
He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue has 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. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English Major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterms exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say Jimmy, take care of yourself. The Letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lta Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letter to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, check ing the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
Isn't ironic to see how men are emasculated and have them succumb to a resort to fantasy world they can never be in just to take themselves away from the dirt and grime that they are fated to be in? Does Army really make you a Man? Yes, it makes you into a different kind of man. It gives you the power to carry loads, ammunitions, weapons and the much unweighed burden. But for that, you can't carry yourself the way you did before.
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross Carried letters From a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College at New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lta. Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.
He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue has 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. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English Major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterms exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say Jimmy, take care of yourself. The Letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lta Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letter to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, check ing the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
Isn't ironic to see how men are emasculated and have them succumb to a resort to fantasy world they can never be in just to take themselves away from the dirt and grime that they are fated to be in? Does Army really make you a Man? Yes, it makes you into a different kind of man. It gives you the power to carry loads, ammunitions, weapons and the much unweighed burden. But for that, you can't carry yourself the way you did before.
posted by F I S at
7:30 am
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