Decisions In On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

As an individual is faced with an important decision, having the support and understanding of others is crucial in order to ensure the individual feels confident enough to choose, what they believe is best for them. By understanding the feelings of another and providing empathy, it lessens the individual’s hesitance to make a decision despite society’s views on the subject. In the short story “On the Rainy River” written and narrated by Tim O’Brien, the narrator is drafted to fight in the Vietnam war and considers draft dodging to avoid fighting for something he disagrees with. When forced to choose between going against his beliefs and fighting in the war, or losing everything he cares about by fleeing the country, Tim seeks refuge at the

Since he opposes the war originally, Tim has to alter his ideologies completely. He is forced to do something he once thought unfathomable, in order to become a soldier, and “take aim at another human being” (175). By doing this just to avoid “patriotic ridicule” (186) Tim goes against everything he believes in solely to ensure people do not judge him. Tim chooses to make tremendous sacrifices of not only his own life but is forced to live with the blood of those he will have to kill. Even if he does survive the war, he will never be the same due to what he sees or does while in Vietnam. Most people consider it an honour to be given the opportunity to fight for one’s country but in Tim’s case it is the opposite. He sees it as himself becoming “a coward” (187) by conforming to other’s expectations instead of fighting for his individual beliefs and “for more than twenty years [he’s] had to live with it” (172). The thought of throwing every one of his beliefs away and taking lives just to fit in is extremely degrading for him and makes him feel like the opposite of the hero he dreamed to be as a child. But it is this event that shows him what perseverance really is. Tim survives the war which itself is no easy task, but additionally he has to live with the feeling of betraying himself in the process. Nothing about war can be easily undone and “[he] can’t fix [his] mistakes” (173) but he has to overcome this feeling of cowardice that is a result of his decisions thus giving him experience with making sacrifices and overcoming hardships. Being able to recover from the ways he’s had to adapt to survive war gives him the experience necessary for him to be able to conquer future obstacles. Therefore by choosing to go to war and having to overcome the many hardships