I really enjoyed the way Tim O'Brien sets the story up. Throughout the entire story, he illustrates how, essentially, obsessed he Jimmy is with Martha. He obsesses over her virginity and even puts a rock in his mouth to pretend he's kissing her. Then, at the end, when Ted Lavender dies, Jimmy suddenly changes his mindset and vows to dedicate himself to his men, and to not think about Martha at all. Yet, I wonder if he will really be able to do so? A lot of the time, people are adamant that they will stop doing something or another, and in the end they usually don't. As a counter point, he did just see someone get his cheek blown off and die.
I also wonder what will drive him to keep living, if not Martha. Maybe it'll be just living. Maybe it'll be just staying alive as a leader for his men. Perhaps from watching too many movies, I have the conception that men in war need something at home to think about and come home to, otherwise they lose their determination to live. I could be wrong, of course. Movies usually aren't that factual.
I appreciate how the author sets the story up too. It doesn't really feel like a story. The beginning really only explains Jimmy's circumstances in the army and his obsessive relationship with Martha. The "story" is really only about one moment in which Jimmy changes his mindset, to the extent that the reader can see. All the moments beforehand seemed more like explanations, as if they were setting the stage and backstory so we could understand what this one moment meant in this one man's life. There is no real progression of events. I just found that interesting. Would this count as a story?
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