Many people watch or read war stories for entertainment. Some of these stories are similar and sometimes they are based in the same wars. The Things They Carried and Forrest Gump are two war stories who have similar plots and similar characters.

In The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross is obsessed with a girl named Martha. He thinks about her night and day, and he keeps himself distracted during the Vietnam War. In Forrest Gump, Forrest, the main character is obsessed with a girl named Jenny. Jenny was a girl from Forrest’s childhood. Jimmy Cross also knew Martha from his childhood. He met her when he was in college. Jimmy Cross fell in love with her when he saw her at a college reunion. Forrest and Jenny grew up together, and this is when Forrest fell for her. Forrest also went off to the Vietnam War in the story. Forrest was also in the Vietnam War. Jimmy Cross and Forrest both kept themselves distracted from the war by thinking of the girls at home. The two stories become even more similar Jimmy “realized she did not love him and never would” (O’Brien 336).  In Forrest Gump, Forrest leaves the war knowing that Jenny does not love him. The two girls are very similar in the way that they are both very pretty girls who are sought after by the soldiers. Both Jimmy Cross and Forrest Gump wrote these girls. The symbolism behind these letters is their love they have for these girls and the comfort they find in them. Jimmy Cross was a lieutenant in the Vietnam War, but Forrest was not. Forrest had a low IQ and was not very bright. He was not capable of being a lieutenant during the war because of this. Even though he did not develop posttraumatic stress disorder from the war he did not forget what happened. Jimmy Cross on the other hand did. Both soldiers went through a lot, and they used their girls to keep themselves distracted.

In both war stories the soldiers develop relationship with the other soldiers. Forrest developed a friendly relationship with a man named Bubba and Lieutenant Dan. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, the main character became friends with a lot of the men at war. Tim has a strong relationship with Kiowa, Jimmy Cross, and Ted Lavender. They had to go through one of the roughest war with these other men, so obviously they became really close with each other. They developed meaningful friendships even though they were all diverse. It was not surprising when some of their friends died that they blamed themselves. In The Things They Carried Jimmy Cross “sat at the bottom of the foxhole and wept…He was grieving for Ted Lavender” (O’Brien 336). Jimmy Cross blamed himself for Ted Lavenders death. Jimmy Cross believed that since he was not focused on the Vietnam War, Ted Lavender died. Jimmy Cross decided from then on he was going to stop thinking about Martha, and he decided to focus more on his men and the war. He was distraught from this and cried over the loss of his friend Ted Lavender. In Forrest Gump, Forrest’s best friend Bubba dies. Forest felt a lot of weight on his shoulders when this happened. He was very upset. Forrest had promised Bubba that they were going to open a shrimp company, and after Bubba died he decided to carry out that promise. Jimmy Cross made a promise to his men to be more focused on then during the Vietnam War. This is similar to the way Forrest promised Bubba that he would carry out his dream. These men developed such strong relationships it was hard to watch any of them die.

Another thing the two war stories have in common is the posttraumatic stress disorder and how the soldiers developed it. After the Vietnam War many soldiers were treated for this mental illness. Jimmy Cross was affected by the war greatly. This is because he was the lieutenant and had a lot of responsibility. He blamed himself when Ted Lavender died, which led to him developing this illness. In Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan was the one who developed posttraumatic stress disorder. Lieutenant Dan lost his legs in the Vietnam War and was sent home, but before that he was in charge if many men. Both of these men had great responsibility in the war, and they both took it personal when their men died. Even though Jimmy Cross was not injured in the war he carried a lot of emotional scars from the war. When Ted Lavender dies Jimmy Cross “felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 336). In this quote it shows the stress Jimmy Cross was put under when one of him men died. He hated himself so much for letting this happen. He blamed himself so much for the death of Ted Lavender it later caused him to develop posttraumatic stress disorder. In the end of the quote it talks about how he was going to carry Lavender’s death for the rest of the war, but Jimmy Cross would carry his death for the rest of his life. Watching his friend die hurt Jimmy Cross so much that it emotionally destroyed him. After he mourned the loss of Ted Lavender, he was emotionless. He could not feel happiness or sadness. The war had ruined him. This also happened to Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. Lieutenant Dan watched his men die and was very affected by it. When Forrest first saw Dan he was at a party and Lieutenant Dan was very drunk. He was simply drinking his pain away that he developed from the war. When Lieutenant Dan was shot during the war he wanted to die, so he did not have to live after the war. Forrest came to his rescue and took him to get medical assistance. Lieutenant Dan was upset about this because he felt it would have been better to die at war than to have to live after it. He was very depressed and felt every emotion instead of taking the easy way out and dying.

These two stories also share some common themes. In the stories there is a lot of love and distant romance. This shows that even soldiers that go to war can feel emotion and love too. Forrest loved Jenny dearly and wrote her all the time, just how Jimmy Cross wrote Martha. The love in the story represents the hope they have to return home. They did not want to lose the thought of hope and home, so their loved ones were always in the back of their minds. Another theme is hope. In The Things They Carried, the soldier carried around object that gave them hope. One of these was the picture Jimmy Cross had of Martha. Kiowa decided that he was going to carry a version of the New Testament bible. Some of the soldiers carried their lover’s pantyhose. This is a symbol for comfort, and how the soldiers longed for this comfort and safety. These things gave them hope and comforted them during the sleepless nights during the war. In Forrest Gump, Forrest and Bubba help on to the dream where they were going to open up their shrimp company. They decided to look forward to the future instead of putting their hope in objects like Kiowa and Jimmy Cross did. The shrimp in Forrest Gump represents the freedom from the war. Every time Bubba would hope for home, he would talk about the shrimp company and his mama.

When watching Forrest Gump and reading The Things They Carried it seems as if the stories overlap. Many of the characters experience the same things during the war, and they even experience the same emotions throughout the stories. Both of the war stories took place during the Vietnam War and seem to cross paths in many aspects. The stories share similar themes, and the characters develop posttraumatic stress disorder. These two stories are undeniably similar, and the characters experience the same feelings and develop through the stories in the same way.
