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Decision Division: On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

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Decision Division What’s the biggest decision that one has to make in life? Many will say what field of work they are going into or what college they want to attend. A big decision that Tim O’Brien has to choose between is going back home to go to war or flee to Canada to try to avoid the war. On the Rainy River by Tim O’Brien takes place in Minnesota during the Vietnam War where many males from the ages of 18-26 are getting drafted. 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 …show more content…

A naive O’Brien stays at the Tip Top Lodge for six days and has time to try to simmer down and make the decision of going to war or fleeing to Canada. During those six days, O’Brien helps Berdahl with work around the grounds to get his mind off the war. Berdahl also helps O’Brien get his mind off the war by playing board games with him such as Scrabble. On the last full day at the Tip Top Lodge, O’Brien brings up the expenses for staying at the lodge but Berdahl understands the trouble that O’Brien is in with being drafted and subtracts labor expenses from O’Brien’s bill. As result of knowing what O’Brien is dealing with, he ends up paying O’Brien money and later on, labels the money “the emergency

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46) It is as this time he decides he wants to head to Canada and escape his draft. He stays at the “Tip Top Lodge”, a small lodge on the river separating the U.S. from Canada. There is only one other resident; an old man who seems to know his predicament, yet never speaks of it. He quickly makes friends with this old man and after a few days accompanies him on a fishing trip.

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O’Brien describes his experience at the Tip Top Lodge as one that resolved an immense inner conflict he faced. When O’Brien received his draft card in the mail to fight in Vietnam, he immediately had to face the fact that he had been “drafted to fight a war that [he] hated” (O’Brien 38). In the face of danger and what he deemed as “moral confusion,” O’Brien suddenly decided that fleeing to Canada was the only way to avoid fighting in Vietnam. While driving north, O’Brien stopped at a fishing resort called the Tip Top Lodge and met Elroy Berdahl. While he refrained from asking obvious questions during O’Brien’s six-day-stay, Berdahl presumably understood O’Brien’s situation.

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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.

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