Strength in the Things They CarriedEveryone must face adversity at some point in their life life. The adversity they go through varies from person to person. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he had to survive the Vietnam War alive. In the short story "The Things They Carried", it is unclear where Cross gets his strength. He seems strong at the beginning of the story, but then again he also seems to gain strength towards the end of the story. This article presents two different points of view. It explains whether Jimmy Cross is a stronger person at the beginning or end of the story. One opinion is that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is stronger before he burned Martha's photos. Its strength comes from its links with the outside world. Martha is his link to life away from war. This is why it is important that “Martha never mentioned the war except to say: Jimmy, take care of yourself. She wasn’t involved in it” (O’Brien 403-404). It symbolizes everything he left behind and everything he hopes to return to one day: innocence, comfort, love and hope. These hopes and dreams are the things that keep him sane; they keep him more human and less of a war machine. He shows his strength by holding on to these things and keeping himself partially detached from the violence around him. He has the uncanny ability to admit that “he was just a child at war, in love. He was twenty-two years old. He couldn’t help it” (397). By having the strength to see this reality, he fights against the power of war to consume a person's entire identity. However, by deciding that, "from now on, when he thought of Marthe, it would only be to think that she belonged... . middle of paper ...... to do, for a man who now does his job and who will see to it that it is done well. Both points of view are valid arguments. Both are well thought out and have good arguments. evidence to support them. So which one is right? Well that's the great thing about short stories like "The Things They Carried", it's up to the reader to decide what that means to them. The purpose of this article was to present two different arguments from two different readers. These views were both able to answer the question of whether Jimmy Cross was stronger at the beginning or end of the story, in their own ways. .Work CitedO'Brien, Tim. “The things they carried.” Literature and its writers: an introduction to fiction, poetry and theater. 2nd ed. Ed. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters. Boston: Bedford, 2001... 392-405.