Jimmy Cross Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a long and expensive conflict in which the United States

attempted, yet ultimately failed to prevent the spread of communism to South Vietnam from the communist country North Vietnam. The United State’s involvement in the war began in 1955 and their efforts fully ceased in 1975. The war had a devastating affect on the country’s population; an estimated two million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War. The conflict in Vietnam was far less devastating to the American militia, claiming the lives of fifty eight thousand and wounding two hundred thousand United States soldiers. The Vietnam War was the most unpopular war with American citizens. One of the contributing factors was media; with media coverage in Vietnam, Americans …show more content…
This narration gives the reader a sensual understanding of what situations would arise in the midsts of war and how a man would cope with the emotions and stress caused by violence. Jimmy Cross expresses his fears through his obsessional unrequited love with a woman named Martha. He confides in his memories of her to console him while in combat. The memories of Martha help Jimmy cope with the war. In the article, “Stressing and Coping Mechanisms”, psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman scientifically defined coping as, “the sum of cognitive and behavioural efforts, which are constantly changing, that aim to handle particular demands, whether internal or external, that are viewed as taxing or demanding.”(Sincero). The psychological definition of coping is an aspect directly observed through Jimmy Cross. Martha is the ‘behavioral effort’ to handle the internal mental trauma of the war. The first few sentences into the story, the reader experiences an immediate insight to Jimmy Cross’ personality. The quote states: “In the late afternoon, after a day's March he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hours of night pretending.”(O’Brien, 366). These few sentences display the level of affection that Jimmy has for Martha. He uses the most proper form of care that he can to handle the letters he receives from her. What the reader understands after learning of Jimmy Cross’ behavior is that ’pretending’ represents a mental escape. As the story progresses, the reader is able to see more instances of him fading in and out of reality. During one of his daydreams, Jimmy Cross admits to one of his unhealthy habits: “On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their

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