ipl-logo

Decision Division: On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

1030 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Tim o'brien the vietnam war

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

Show More
Related
1757 Words | 8 Pages

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.

Read More
245 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
839 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

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

Read More
2315 Words | 10 Pages

The decision to go to war is not a decision that is taken lightly. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien faces cultural, social and political factors that end up leading him to forgo his plan to dodge the draft, and to report as instructed, a mere yards away from his destination of Canada (57). In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Rocky and Tayo, two young Native American men, experience cultural, social and political factors that draw them into the Army, fighting the Second World War for a country that considers them less than human. The stories of these characters are not unique, they are stories that are representative of the stories of young American men at the time, who faced cultural, social, and political factors during both conflicts.

Read More
612 Words | 3 Pages

Reader Response of “On the Rainy River” The short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O 'Brien explains to the audience that all men are influenced to go into war, and that they should hide the fears and emotions that they may have along the journey. Throughout the short story the author explains his journey and opens up about his emotions when he was sent to war. Being the audience of this short story explains to you what every man must go through if they were to be sent to war.

Read More
813 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1205 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
813 Words | 4 Pages

The Fear of Decision Making In the short story, On The Rainy River by Tim O'Brien, he writes about what he did after he got his draft notice and his fear of going to the war and getting killed. He ran to the Canadian border to run away from this duty but in the end could not run away because of his cowardliness. Fear is the feeling of being afraid of something or to avoid or put off doing something because one is afraid. Everyone is afraid of different things such as spiders or the dark or monsters under the bed but everyone is afraid of making the wrong decisions.

Read More
1398 Words | 6 Pages

In addition, he deals with resentment towards America and its handling of these events, specifically how America blames others rather than itself. Overall, In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien allows him to express his anger and disagreements with the Vietnam conflict, and the psychological

Read More
807 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
845 Words | 4 Pages

In the story he explains that he wants to go to Canada because he does not want to be killed in the war and Canada is the safe place. The author mentions how he thinks it is unfair that he has to go fight in a war that he disagrees with. The other option the author faces is to go fight the war in Vietnam. He is very afraid to disappoint his family and friends because it would be obvious if he ran away and he would never be able to go back. He saw himself as a coward because he was embarrassed.

Read More
1756 Words | 8 Pages

How he hated being drafted and how badly he wanted to run away. He tells how he took time to himself to decide whether or not he was going to run away and risk being caught and imprisoned or go join the army and risk dying over in Vietnam. He states at the end, “ I passed through twins with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward.

Read More
837 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
708 Words | 3 Pages

The short story “On the Rainy River”, by Tim O’Brien is an exploration of how guilt and the pressures of society can shape one’s decision making. O’Brien feels guilty about going to war in Vietnam which contradicts his principles and his dream of becoming a writer. In the story, O’Brien admits, “I was a coward, I went to war” (O’Brien 80); he feared how the people of his community, and the rest of society would view him if he ran away. He feared the external embarrassment he would face if he dodged his draft notice instead of serving in the war; the fear of being judged by society was too unbearable for him to face. During O’Brien’s encounter with Elroy Berdahl, he is influenced to adhere to a decision, however, he chose to conform to the expectations of society.

Read More

More about Decision Division: On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

Related Topics

Open Document