Journey In On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

Heroes are everywhere, and no one ever knows when they will show up in life. In the story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the story describes a certain time in someone’s life that they didn’t know what to do. TIm O’Brien is the character and is very confused with what he wants to do. He was called to the war, something called the draft wanted to bring him into the war, basically volunteer him. O’Brien then decides to leave his job and head north to Canada.

Before the war O’Brien worked hard on his studies and didn’t believe in the war. Once he got drafted into the war he had a moral split. He seriously contemplated running away from his problems and fleeing to Canada. Minnesota and Canada separated one life from another. He drove up to a lodge where he met an older man who changed his life forever.

As a result, O’Brien struggles with his decision to do what he believes is right, as he wants to do what he thinks it right, but he cannot deal with the criticism of others. He says, “My conscience told me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly was a sense of shame. I did not want people to think badly of me,” (51 and 52). Due to the societal standpoint at the time, he simply could not resist embarrassment others would bestow upon him.

When first getting drafted, O’Brien falls as a coward to his country, and initially refuses to go, even debating escaping to Canada, but ultimately, as Owen Gilman Jr. puts it, he “opted to comply with his country’s demands” (Walden 224). Unfortunately, this allows O’Brien to build up everything he writes about and turns out against, one of them being that America wants to hide the true history. ‘Nam was a rebuke against America for their unnecessary response and action, and though America does realize that this is correct, it still wishes to forget it all, because surely the Land of the Free can’t be against what it was created for, can it? The answer is yes, because of that image that America wants to have. Coming out of World War II, America emerges as a superpower, and Vietnam destroys a large amount of that title.

To go into it, I’ve always thought, would only cause embarrassment for all of us,” (O’Brien 37). O’Brien succeeds at telling this war story because in the short story, On the Rainy River, he contemplates escaping the draft by fleeing to Canada or being a man and going to war. He knows that if he flees to Canada, he will be painted as a coward in

He and Erik shared the same beliefs about the war, and they often wrote to each other while they were in Vietnam. Towards the end of the book, O’Brien wrote to Erik that all he had seen was “evil” and no good (186). This description of the war helps paint the picture of O’Brien’s own mind and belief that the war was nothing but pure immorality. Near their first meeting, Erik even described his own wish to escape the war and move to Europe to become an author (34). O’Brien also admitted to the readers that their coalition was mainly against the war and was created to try and preserve themselves (35).

Either decision O’Brien makes will impact his living for the rest of his life. In the end O’Brien goes to war but calls himself a “coward” (pg. 55). What O’Brien did, is what most people consider brave going to war “defending” your country however O’Brien considers that maybe fleeing would be even

Throughout life we experience hardships, and we use these past experiences to help us make future decisions that overall grow as human beings. In Tim O ‘ Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried,” the characters not only carry physical baggage but emotional ones as well. They are forced to feel the effects of war such as guilt, burdens, and other factors that come with being a soldier. Soldiers going into the war often went in with immense pride that they were serving their country however in doing this they didn’t know they would lose their innocence and see the world in a new perspective when they returned. “My hometown was a conservative little spot on the prairie, a place where tradition counted” (O’Brien 38) shows where O’Brien lived in a place where things like the draft were taken very seriously.

I went to war” (O’brien 58). In this quote Tim O’brien uses the story of when he found out he had to go to war. He did not want to go but forced himself and regretted it. He did not regret going to the war afterwards but he did when he first made the choice. He called himself a coward for deciding that he was going to do it, based on everything he knew about war.

He described his emotions as he thought about going to Canada to escape the war, “…the fear spreading inside me like weeds… It was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split…I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile…losing the respect…everything that mattered to me.” (O’Brien). He could not ignore his human nature of trying to conform to societal expectations for which he blamed his town.

Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

This is evident when Mr. O’Brien says, “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to,” (pg. 57.) In the end the author realized what he must do and went back home, so he could fight in the Vietnam

This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This

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.