Lieutenant Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried

Changes in Lieutenant Jimmy Cross

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a character from the story “The Things They Carried”. This story is about different men that are in a platoon with Lt. Cross and what they all carry with them during the war. A dynamic character is a character that changes throughout the story. Lt. Cross is a perfect example of a dynamic character because his love for Martha changes throughout the story.

In the beginning, Lt. Cross was all in love with Martha and nothing else came close to even being thought about. Martha was a girl that he met before going overseas when he went over they started sending letters to each other. Although those were not lover letters, Cross always hoped that one day they would be, “Wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last

Cross realized that Martha would never love him. When he finally realized this concept, Cross was depressed cause he spent all his time thinking about how he wanted her to love him. “On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letter. Then he burned the two photographs.” (par. 81). Lt. Cross also piece together that they do and would not live in the same world, “When he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity” (par. 94). After giving Martha up while he is in the war he decided to stick to being an officer and there for his men. He figured out ways to tell his men that he would accept full responsibly and blame for Ted’s death. He realized that doing these gestures would not ease his guilt or blame but he proved to himself that he was going to stop putting Martha before his