carried
... a good job of bridging this gap, but I did not feel the emotional weight in the story that would have been conveyed through a first person narrative. Lt. Jimmy Cross is the main character in the story. He has many emotional burdens. He is in love with a woman, Martha, yet he is on the opposite side of the world. He has many doubts and fears. Throughout the story Lt. Cross diligently tries to deal with each of these to minimize the things he carries. This story makes us aware of the enormous pressures that these platoons of men deal with on a daily basis. O’Brien accomplishes this throughout the story, by not only telling us about each item a soldier carries, but also the weight of it. “As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, 26 pounds with its battery.” (p.503) However, the greatest weight the men feel come from nothing that they can physically carry, but their emotions. “ They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run, freeze or hide and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all because it could never be put down.” (p.513) This shows some of the real horror of war; not who wins or who dies, but also what effect it has on all parties involved, including the soldiers out there usually fighting battles that they would rather not be fighting. The soldiers often find themselves dreaming of ways to rid themselves of these burdens. Lt. Cross tries to rid himself of intangible burdens by disposing of tangible ones that, to him, represent intangible qualities. He does this by burning his letters from Martha. He also carries a pebble that Martha gave to him. Though it only weighs a...