"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
             In the short story, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, First Lieutenant Jimmy cross, a platoon leader in the Vietnam War, is caught up in a dream where he believes that Martha, a college student, is in love with him. He holds on to this dream that ultimately causes Ted Lavender, one of his men, to get shot in the head and die. Lieutenant Cross encounters many changes and morphs from constant fantasies about Martha to concentrating on his duties as Lieutenant. Having lost one of his men due to his empty distraction of the letters from Martha, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has to over come this make-believe love and take his responsibility for his duty and over his men.
             Cross agonizes over Martha through two letters, pictures, and a little whit pebble that she sent to him. Instead of paying attention to the war and to his men, he daydreams about the two of them going on romantic vacations in the mountains and rolling around on the beach. He tears himself apart over little things about her, such as whether or not she is a virgin. He ponders over one of the two pictures that he has of her where she is leaning against a brick wall. On the wall he can see the shadow of the photographer and wonders who took it and whether or not it was a boyfriend of hers. As he reads the letters, he pretends that she is saying that she loves him.
             Cross somewhat begins to realize that the words in her letters are not words of love but that she is a poet and that is how poets write. He then starts eating himself up over wanting her to love him the way that he loves her. In one instance, one of his men, Lee Strunk, crawls into a tunnel to check for enemies and is gone for a very long time. Cross tries to see if he's all right by just staring into the hole; however, his mind wonders back to Martha and how their love is like the tunnel and how it could cave in at any moment. He rec...