LOVE

Years after the War… Jimmy Cross visits Tim O’Brien at home The two start by drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and looking at photographs from the war (they eventually switch to gin, which prompts a even deeper topics from Cross) The two come to a picture of Ted Lavender, the soldier killed while Cross was preoccupied thinking of Martha

Compounded Guilt Cross confesses that he never forgave himself for Lavender’s death, O’Brien tries to sympathize As the conversation gets more uncomfortable, O’Brien tries to steer it into lighter territory He brings up how Henry Dobbins would wear his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck in the jungle

Cross and Martha reunited? Cross tells O’Brien how he met Martha at a reunion after the war She is now a Lutheran missionary He tries to hold her hand but she doesn’t return the affection. He tells her of his fantasy of tying her down and holding her knee-she responds that she doesn’t understand hoe men can be so vile She doesn’t respond when he tells her he loves her At breakfast the next day she gives him an other photograph and tells him not to burn this one

Othello… Meet Cross! O’Brien tells Cross that he intends to write a book about the experience of Vietnam Cross suggests that maybe Martha would read it and come crawling back to him Cross tells O’Brien to depict him as brave and strong “Don’t mention anything about_____”

Chronology “Love” is the second story in The Things They Carried, but it doesn’t follow chronologically, instead it jumps in time to after the war This is significant in the art of storytelling… Time lines and chronology are things readers typically look for to help them construct the story. By hampering our ability to make meaning in the novel, O’Brien is suggesting that the reality of war is that is alters your perception of reality-that things like time are unimportant

Why is this experience so painful? Besides being embarrassing, Cross with the help of gin, comes close to-but never directly states the ultimate tragedy here… That a man (Lavender) was killed while Cross was fantasizing about a woman who never loved him

Finally, the secret…. O’Brien does not tell us the secret Cross tells him to keep. This is significant for several reasons Further ties the author O’Brien to the experience of a real soldier who knows a secret, he’s “in” the story Suggests to the reader that it is important that they do not 100% trust O’Brien to tell them everything. He can be called an “unreliable narrator” Again, this challenges your perception of reading a novel. We are used to the narrator telling us what is happening in the story. What happens when he refuses? The end of the story is ambiguous, it can be interpreted and analyzed many different ways. By offering no concrete truth, O’Brien again challenges our experience of reading a novel