Summary
Years after the end of the war, Jimmy Cross goes to visit
Tim O'Brien at his home in Massachusetts. They drink coffee and
smoke cigarettes, looking at photographs and reminiscing. When they
come across a picture of Ted Lavender, Cross confesses that he has
never forgiven himself for Lavender's death. O'Brien comforts him
by saying that he feels the same way about other things, and the
two men switch from coffee to gin. They steer the conversation away
from the more harsh memories and laugh about less upsetting recollections,
such as the way Henry Dobbins used to carry his girlfriend's pantyhose
around his neck as a good-luck charm. Finally, by the end of the
night, O'Brien thinks it's safe to ask about Martha.
Cross tells O'Brien that when he finally reconnected with
Martha at a college reunion in 1979, they
spent most of their time together, catching up. She had become a
Lutheran missionary and had done service in Ethiopia, Guatemala,
and Mexico. She had never married and told Cross she didn't know
why. Later, Cross took her hand, but Martha didn't squeeze back;
when he told her he loved her, she didn't answer. Finally Cross
told her that the night of their only date, after they watched Bonnie
and Clyde, all he'd wanted to do was to take her home and
tie her to her bed so he could touch her knee all night long. Martha
replied coldly that she didn't understand how men could do such
things. At breakfast the next morning, she apologized and gave him
another snapshot, telling him not to burn this one.
Cross tells O'Brien that he still loves Martha. But for
the rest of his visit with O'Brien, he doesn't speak of her. Finally,
as O'Brien walks Cross to his car, he tells his former lieutenant
that he would like to write a story about some of what they have
spoken about. After some consideration, Cross consents, saying that
maybe Martha will read it and come begging for him. He urges O'Brien
to paint him as a brave and good leader. He then asks O'Brien for
a favor—that he not “mention anything about—.” O'Brien responds
that he won't.
Analysis
“Love” functions as a postscript or epilogue for the story
of Jimmy Cross and Martha, begun in the previous story, “The Things
They Carried.” O'Brien's explanation of how things turned out for
Cross and Martha, twenty years after the war, is his first reference
to the fallout of Vietnam. When the war ended, soldiers returned
home to realize the dreams they had put on hold during the war.
However, what was waiting for them in the end wasn't always what
they hoped it would be. Cross put his faith in Martha because he
couldn't put his faith in war itself and because the notion of her
as a sexual being and as someone who might want to start a life
with him upon his return was safe and comforting.
The meaning of the title “Love” is complicated because
Cross is both skeptical of the word and hopeful that it carries
meaning in Martha's letters. Cross's skepticism becomes clear early
on; when he reads Martha's letters in an effort to distract himself
from the atrocities and unknowns he faces in the jungle, he suspects
that the “Love” with which she signs her letters is merely a figure
of speech. When the details are filled in years after the fact,
the truth of the word “Love” is revealed—Martha never loved Cross.
In effect, this realization makes only more profound the impact
of Lavender's death on the already guilt-ridden Cross. Whether Martha
is uninterested because she is incapable of love, because Cross's
obsession with her eventually turned her off, or because the time
in which she came of age was filled with such abject disillusionment,
Cross is injured—he needs gin to prompt him into speaking, and he
doesn't want to linger too long on the topic.
Through Cross's character, O'Brien shows how repression
of painful memories can be essential for survival. Cross carries
a haunting secret with him from his experience leading the Alpha Company,
but O'Brien leaves the nature of the secret ambiguous. Informed
by the previous story, we assume that the secret is Cross's lingering
guilt over Lavender's death, but O'Brien not only refuses to name
it, he actually obscures Cross's naming of the secret at the end
of “Love.”
O'Brien's narrative strategies reflect the repression
that his characters practice. O'Brien himself is unwilling to communicate
fully with his readers, which makes it unclear whether or not he
is reliable. It is unclear, for instance, whether O'Brien's conversation
with Cross actually happened or whether it is a fiction that renders
“The Things They Carried” more realistic. Though the distinction
is not made in this story, or in any of the others, the resemblance
between O'Brien the author and O'Brien the main character is one
of several attempts O'Brien makes to raise the stakes of his storytelling
and to inspire our investment in his stories. The distinction between
truth and fiction does not mean much to O'Brien; feelings behind
the story give the narrative its purpose. Therefore, whether or
not O'Brien betrayed Cross is irrelevant when compared to the impact of
Cross's feelings of guilt.
The ambiguous ending of “Love” is symptomatic of the difficulty war
veterans have in vocalizing traumatic experiences. We cannot be
sure if the thing Cross asks O'Brien not to mention has been put in
the story or not. Perhaps O'Brien has betrayed his friend and the thing
Cross requested he not mention is his guilt over Ted Lavender's
death or his relationship with and eventual rejection by Martha.
Or perhaps O'Brien is faithful to Cross's wishes and the thing he is
asked not to mention is kept from us the entire time. No matter what
Cross's secret is, O'Brien's ambiguities force us to consider the act
of writing as a way of conveying the conflicting motivations involved
in making difficult decisions.
