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On The Rainy River Literary Analysis

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One Day, One letter, One number. In “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, Tim is forced to make a huge life changing choice. Tim has a good life as a small town Minnesota boy who has a full ride through Harvard and knows what he wants in life. But when Tim goes to the mailbox on June 17th 1968, there’s a letter waiting for him. A draft letter and his body goes numb.
A draft letter is a document telling boys ages 16 to 28 that they are going to be tested to be a soldier. If they pass all the health tests then they become a soldier for whatever war is going on at that time. If you had graduated college and were healthy then you were a perfect candidate for the war. The draft letter is for the Vietnam war.
The war had already been going on for 13 years …show more content…

Tim finally realized he could not leave his family behind and he was going to stay and fight. into the river. By this point he also knew that Elroy understood why Tim was there, by the little hints at supper and by taking him fishing almost to Canada. Tim didn’t jump no matter how much a part of him wanted too.
The biggest effect the letter had on Tim was his beliefs. He believed war was wrong, but most thought it was the right thing to do so they could stop the spread of communism .Tim also was scared of dying in war. It was the thing he feared most, He said, “Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die (1005).” Tim also thought war was cruel and it should not be an option, but what about what everyone would think of him? He had to go to war because he could never
Upset his family and country just like that. He thinks of himself as a coward because he went to war, against what he thought was morally right. Both options were very cowardly. It was either go to Canada and give up his life, or going against his beliefs and going to

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A man you have never met might be the man to save your life. In the story “ On the Rainy River”, a Young man named Tim was drafted into war, and his only escape was Canada. Along his trip he came across a cabin owned by Elroy. Elroy gave Tim food and shelter, and gave him a chance to make a life changing decision.

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Tim would have expected Life to be the most safe one of their family due to his loyalty to Britain, but he was captured anyway. The death of Life Meeker makes Tim develop a strong hatred toward the Loyalists due to the fact that they do not value loyalty or care about the innocent, such as this instance. Tis develops Tim’s final decision of neutrality is influenced by Jerry’s death because both the British and Patriots caused the death of the ones he cared most

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In the short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the main character Tim O’Brien gets a letter notifying him that he has been selected for the draft; he is affected by this emotionally, physically, and he faces a moral dilemma because this war goes against what he believes in. Immediately upon receiving the letter O’Brien thinks, “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn’t happen. I was above it” (1003).

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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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The men who served in the Vietnam War were just barely men, some of them were just hitting the age twenty. It was the draft which brought these boys into the fight involuntarily, to fight a war which they saw no meaning in. Many of these boys are the sons of veterans who fought in World War II, that came home to parades and were held up like heroes for fighting. Honorary men of the country and the soldiers fighting for Vietnam did not want to disappoint them. Thus, when O’Brien mentions in the quote, valor was not the point, he is trying to explain to the reader that the men went like it was a job they had to do, not a random act of courage that willed them to proceed.

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Tim imagined how much of a great life or how he may have lived his life up until the day that he was killed by Tim O’Brien. Tim felt both the responsibility and guilt of the person that he killed while saving his own life in the process. Seeing a body as it is lying down in front of you nearly dying and there is not a chance of saving them could leave a scaring memory that would never go away all due to the fact that it happened right in front of your eyes and mostly because of you. Tim may have tried to forget or not think of what had happened but the death of someone usually never goes away and is somehow always a lingering memory that could not be

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In “On the Rainy River” Tim struggles to make a decision on whether he should fight for his country in the war or flee to Canada. Tim did not believe in the war. He was an innocent young man, freshly graduated from college with a naive view of the world. “Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop.” (Page 3/Paragraph 8)

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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.

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There was no sense of morality or politics or duty. Tim completed what he was trained to do, and that was to defend the camp against the enemy. The lone soldier was the enemy. Later Tim views his actions as impulsive and regrets throwing the grenade, despite his peers’ support. Tim declares, “Sometimes I forgive myself, sometimes I don’t.

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I went to the war.” (last paragraph 58) This helps us understand that going to war was not an accomplishment for Tim. He regretted not running away and hated that he went.

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