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Journey In On The Rainy River By Tim O Brien

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Textual Analysis
In the short story “On the Rainy River” O’Brien uses an archetypal journey to show that he is not an archetypal hero. Jung decided there was a pattern to journeys in heroic stories so he made 11 stages that all heroic journeys follow. I have chosen 1 that O’Brien does follow and 2 that he does not to follow to emphasize his cowardness and his inability to stand up for what he believes in. Increased awareness of fear and change, over coming fear and mastery.

In the quote “In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong”(O’Brien). O’Brien shows us readers that he does not believe that America should have been involved in the Vietnam war. He wanted change in the American war ideology and wanted America to implicate some more liberal views. This is proof that O’Brien was trying to include the stage of increased awareness and change of an archetypal journey because now that he is drafted and old enough to go to war he realises that he does not believe in doing so. This …show more content…

Instead of wanting to change his way of life in America and move to Canada without his family he decides to stay in America and go to war. “I couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it was. And right then I submitted. I would go to the war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing.” O’Brien is trying to show the readers that he is not courageous and he followed what everyone else did which does not make him a hero at all. This proves that he does not overcome his fear of starting a new life in Canada and conforms to what his friends,family, and the government want him to do which goes against the heroic archetypal

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