Love is a strong emotion. Love is an emotion strong enough to carry a man through warfare. Small artifacts that remind a person of love from back home hold the ability to have an escape mechanism for a soldier. In the film Forrest Gump, Forrest signs up to fight in the Vietnam War. Every time Forrest gets scared, he thinks about the love of his life, Jenny. In O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would carry around letters from a girl that Jimmy was in love with, Martha. These are two examples of how powerful emotions can be to get people through tough times. By comparing the context, type of person, and amount of communication between two people, we can see that, for soldiers in Vietnam, having the feeling of love was an important emotion to have on the battlefield. Having the feeling of love is important because it can relax the soldiers, give them inspiration, and can be the soldiers inspiration to fight.

Forrest Gump and Jimmy Cross are in similar situations in Vietnam, however, the given information on both of their backgrounds, with their loved ones, lead to a belief that they come from different backgrounds. Forrest and Jenny have spent a lot of time together. Jenny let him sit next to her on the first day of school, they hung out at their favorite tree, and Forrest would go over to her house and help her hide from her dad. Jimmy seems to have less of a background with Martha. 