Hero's Journey In On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

The main characters, Tim O’Brien and Elroy Berdahl, meet as O’Brien resides at Berdahl’s Tip Top Lodge on the Rainy River. O’Brien is at Berdahl’s lodge for six days as he tries to decide whether to avoid the war and flee to Canada or go back to his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota and fight in the Vietnam War. On the final day of O’Brien’s stay at the Tip Top Lodge, Berdahl takes him fishing and gives him the opportunity to flee to Canada. O’Brien hallucinates and fights with himself whether or not to go to Canada but in the end, he ends up going back to Worthington, Minnesota, and later on to war. On the Rainy River by Tim O’Brien illustrates the pains of the Vietnam War as O’Brien gets drafted and as an

The main character, Tim O'Brien, in the story On The Rainy River, is shown to be a round dynamic overall through his personality and belief change to war. The indications of a dynamic character are when a character goes through significant changes to their personality or other inner beliefs. The first indication of such change is shown through the initial and post-change moments of his stance on participating in the war. Tim's stance was that "when a nation goes to war, it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause"(O'Brien, 20). Through this statement.

In Tim O'Brien's "On The Rainy River" from the novel Things They Carried, the author emphasizes the meaning of the River. " On The Rainy River" explores the meaning of separation between O'Brien's two different futures. As O'Brien battles his two different lives, he worries about what consequences will come with each side. O'Brien highlights how he was impulsive and began heading for the border where his life would be at the most risk. "

O’Brien presents a variety of stories to present the complexity of war. “On The Rainy River” is a pre-war

Being enlisted in the war, Robert is compelled to see many things he was once blind to. After leaving “the ordinary world” he must toughen up to reality and embark on his journey to find purpose. According to Joseph Campbell, the “readers are experiencing the journey through the eyes of the hero; a hero’s primary purpose along his journey is to be separated from the ordinary world” and unravel many truths (Campbell, n.p.). Similarly, Robert is exposed to adult-like behaviour that frightens and forces him to mature faster. Findley introduces passages demonstrating war by using the literary device of irony to reveal his perception of the nature of the war by acknowledging war as something “logical”.

Compositional techniques have been used within the prescribed text to express memorable ideas. Martel has explored various themes in his novel ‘Life of Pi’ (published in 2001), such as reality versus fiction, and the power of storytelling. The story tells of a 16-year-old boy, Pi Patel, who is recounting his 227 days stranded on a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger to a fictitious author “writing” the story. The author’s use of allegory throughout the novel is highly developed and effective. An allegory is a representation of a complex idea through more concrete forms.

How it was shaped: Tim allowed the draft of the Vietnam war and societal pressures get to the best of him and he slowly tore himself apart, he started off as a confident incorrigible man. His morals later then became corrupted, he gave into the pressures, his self proclaimed Lone Ranger status had been infected and debunked by his end decision of serving in the Vietnam war. Thesis: In the story, On the Rainy River, the author, Tim O’Brien demonstrates that an individual allows societal pressures and expectations to override their core values, morals, and beliefs; peer pressure forces individuals to put their beliefs aside so they can fit in with everyone else. The narrator, Tim O’Brien faces a similar situation when he get’s drafted for the Vietnam War.

Guilt and shame are invisible forces that bind us to what if’s, and keeps us from pursuing life in a carefree manner. If we so feel that we are choosing the path that’s wrong for us even if it is what we believe is best, guilt will be there to pull us back into our place and shame will follow to remind us of our mistakes. Tim O’Brien, from the short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, essentially succumbs to the guilt he feels from attempting a flee to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam War, and the consequence of feeling shame that arises from that. Family often plays a significant role in the way we live our lives. It is not uncommon that even as grown adults we will revolve our own decisions based on the ones around us and how they would feel about our actions.

Pg 178. At this lodge he met an older gentlemen named Elroy Berdahl, Tim had spent a total of 6 days at this lodge, where he learnt a lot about himself, Throughout the stay, Elroy never asked much about Tim; where he had come from, what he was running from, anything about his family. On the last day, Elroy had taken him out to go ‘’fishing’’ where they crossed the Canadian border, here is where Tim lost himself briefly, He thought about jumping and swimming across, He looked for reassurance, thinking ‘’ What would you do, would you jump?’’ He did this in his head but acted like he was talking to a different person. He then visioned his family and how they opposed what he was doing, his friends and future family as well.

` As Joe’s excitement mounted to give rides on his newly purchased boat, his joy soon turned to dread as one of his beloved passengers tumbled into the water. The author, Horatio Alger Jr., of “Joe’s Reward” writes a story of a hero named Joe, who rescues a wealthy man’s niece that ends with an offer of a reward. The text consists of Joe’s actions that happen to drive the plot using specific events. Throughout the story, Horatio uses myth-like elements, such as a damsel in distress, a heroic act, and the hero receiving and turning down a reward, to assist the plot in moving forward.

After analyzing “On the Rainy Road” through an archetypal lens, it is clear that the symbols effectively indicate that going to war was a terrible decision. To start, Tim’s archetypal character showed that he was not emotionally ready to go to war. For instance, when Tim was trying to decide if he should go to war or run away to Canada, he had flashbacks described as follows, “I saw a seven-year-old boy in a white cowboy hat… I saw a sixteen-year-old kid decked out for his first prom, looking spiffy in a white tux,” (O’Brien). Tim imagined the colour white which is the archetypal colour for purity and innocence, showing he represents the divine child archetype.

In the short story, “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the author develops the idea that when an individual experiences a feeling of shame and humiliation, they often tend to neglect their desires and convictions to impress society. Tim, the narrator, starts off by describing his feeling of embarrassment, “I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame”, before even elaborating on the cause of the feeling. Near the end of the story, he admits he does not run off and escape to Canada because it had nothing to do with his, “mortality...Embarrassment, that’s all it was”. The narrator experiences this feeling of intense shame and then he decides that he will be “a coward” and go to war. His personal desire is that he wishes to live a normal life and could never imagine himself charging at an enemy position nor ever taking aim at another human being.

This quote from “ On the River of Raining.” This quote is written by Tim O’Brien. He was describing that how he make his decisions to go on war. Even Though he wants to escape from it. This quote is very important because these is when O'Brien make his final decisions to go a war.

The concept of “The Hero’s Journey” plays a major role in nearly every piece of fiction humanity has created since its inception, from epic poems to blockbuster movies. In many ways, works of fiction and some pieces of nonfiction could not exist and would not make sense without the concept of a Hero’s Journey; it allows the reader to comprehend and follow the progression of characters over the course of the story. While Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road may not display most of the archetypal qualities found in classic Hero’s Journeys such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit or Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, it most clearly exemplifies the qualities of a Hero’s Journey through the Boy’s character in relation to the mentor, tests and enemies, and the

On the Rainy River is a story about a man, Tim O’Brien, who struggles with a life altering decision. He evaluated his own personal convictions regarding the Vietnam War at an isolated fishing lodge by the Canadian border. Three different forms of isolation are present in this story. These include physical, emotional, and societal isolation – all of which had an effect on how Tim dealt his conflicting emotions. Physical isolation played a prominent role in Tim O’Brien’s final decision to go to war.