When a commoner thinks of this word, little is brought to mind. We get an image of a soldier; usually male, dressed in a camouflage uniform, helmet, and creeping through a field undetected by the enemy while carrying their gun. This naivety has kept us in the dark, giving us an altered definition of the word, perhaps to conceal its true form. Only experience can bring someone to complete comprehension of anything. This is O"Brien's story.
Jimmy Cross is the central character in this third-person narrative recollection of the Vietnam War. He is a young Lieutenant who is madly in love with a woman back in the States named Martha. Although she writes to him every week, the passionate love is not returned. In one letter, Martha includes a "simple pebble.smooth.milky-white with flecks of orange and violet" (O"Brien 1106). She found it on the New Jersey shore- "where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated" (1106). Despite the pebbles" small stature, I believe it to be the central idea of this story. The majority of the story centers on all the things carried by soldiers during everyday combat; the stone itself isn't emphasized as much. O"Brien did not place as much of an importance on the role of the pebble as it should have been given. .
Martha's poetry brought out many images as to the significance of her tiny gift. There were three that seemed to stick out while I read the rest of the story. The first was a connection to the shore itself. A shore is a place were land and sea meet, and where soldiers leave their homes and loved ones behind (separated). Yet it is also where they come home from war (brings them together with their home and loved ones once again). We come to understand through the story that this is something soldiers dream about: coming back and being together with what they know and love. Perhaps Martha wanted Jimmy to have a piece of home to give him something else to think about rather than the war; for it was found at "high tide"--when Jimmy was at his highest point of mental and emotional decline.