In literature, a static character is one that does not undergo important change in the course of the story; in other words, they end up the same person as they started. On the other hand, a dynamic character is one that does undergo an important change. However, this change does not refer to a change of circumstance, but of character. By definition, a dynamic character has to undergo an internal change, even if that is triggered by external circumstances. That is exactly what happens to First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross in Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried.” The death of Ted Lavender by enemy fire causes a profound internal change in Cross, but the nature of this change is not what it seems on the surface. On the surface it seems Cross, blaming himself as platoon leader for Lavender’s death, has turned into a more responsible, focused character.
He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as an officer.
But the deeper change in Cross is more sinister and an indictment of what war does to young men. Cross turns from a romantic idealist to a man pumped with hate and from a sensitive person to a man operating on autopilot. Symbolic of this change are two acts of arson: Cross’s vengeful burning and hacking of the Vietnamese village Than Khe and, later, of the letters and photos of his friend Martha, whom he has believed himself to be in love with. In the beginning of the story, Cross is frequently found daydreaming about Martha and examining the nature of his relationship with her. He pores over her letters and pictures, which are a refuge to him in his “hole” of a bunker. With Lavender’s death, Cross feels he has to pay a price for this softness. The burning of Than Khe and Martha’s missives symbolizes Cross shedding his innocence. Perhaps this is the only way to survive the brutal reality of war.
He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his stomach. He loved her but he hated her. No more fantasies, he told himself. Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity.
If Cross’s arc moves from innocence to skepticism, Mitchell Sanders is already mired on the far end in static, unfeeling cynicism. He is a hardened version of what Cross may become. There is no change in Sanders’s hardened attitude over the course of the story. We first see an example of this when Sanders performs the grotesque act of cutting off the thumb of a Viet-Cong corpse and gifting it to a fellow soldier.
Sanders wrapped the thumb in toilet paper and handed it across to Norman Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he kicked the boy's head, watched the flies scatter…
According to Sanders, there is a moral to this whole incident. Though we never learn the moral explicitly, we do get a sense of a man who deals with the horrors of his situation with bleak humor and exaggerated acts of cruelty.
Later, Sanders repeats the same line about “a moral” when Ted Lavender dies, indicating the static nature of his character.
There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders. They were waiting for Lavender’s chopper, smoking the dead man’s dope. The moral’s pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they’ll ruin your day every time. Cute, said Henry Dobbins. Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains. They made themselves laugh.
The bleak reality about the characters’ journeys in the world of “The Things They Carried” is that the only way to be dynamic is to move toward the stasis of numbness or death. Jimmy Cross can either end up as the dead Ted Lavender or the battle-worn Mitchell Sanders. What he cannot remain is soft. In this, Vietnam war veteran Tim O’Brien is collapsing the categories of dynamic and static characters the way we understand them. During war, the only “growth” is toward the end of growth, he seems to be saying.
They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they’d say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn’t cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself.
Ted Lavender is a static character in the sense that the first time we hear about him, he is dead, having just been killed. Almost every time thereafter that he is mentioned, he is likewise dead, having just been killed. When he is not quite dead, the descriptions of him are qualified with phrases such as "Until he was shot" or "when he was shot and killed." Ted Lavender is defined, throughout the story, by his death, whether it be his impending death, the moment of his death, or how he is remembered after—and in relation to—his death. He has no other purpose in the story, other than to die and to be dead.
The only character in the story to undergo any significant change is First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Ironically, the change that he undergoes is catalyzed by the fact that Ted Lavender never does change. The unremitting constancy of Ted Lavender's death is what eats away at Lieutenant Cross, and it is what ultimately brings about the change in his character. At the beginning of the story, Lieutenant Cross is an officer who has become complacent in his duties because he is so desperately in love with Martha, "a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey." He blames that complacency for the death of Lavender, who was one of his men. At the end of the story, he burns the letters and photographs of Martha and convinces himself that he "hated her." This is the only way he can become a better Lieutenant; it is the only way he can prevent carrying the weight of another death that he is responsible for. At the beginning of the story, Lieutenant Cross is defined by a rather innocent, boyish love for Martha. By the end of the story, there is still a trace of that love, but it has become, in the furnace of war, "a hard, hating kind of love."
A dynamic character undergoes change in the narrative, and Lt. Jimmy Cross best fits this description in the short story "The Things They Carried." Initially, Jimmy Cross carries obsessive thoughts of Martha and home with him as he leads his platoon on patrol. However, after the death of Ted Lavender by sniper fire, Jimmy Cross vows to be a better, less preoccupied leader to his men and burns the letters and pictures of Martha so that he won't be distracted.
A static character undergoes no change in the narrative. Kiowa fits this description because after Ted Lavender's death, Kiowa fixates on the sight of him falling and replays the memory over and over, even when his platoon mates tell him to "shut up" about it. Although he does not wish to replay the memory—for example, when he is trying to fall asleep—the vision returns, along with Kiowa's own description of "Boom-down."
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