Tim O Brien Themes

The theme and his life experience are relatable because his experiences of war is what the theme is telling us readers, that war isn’t a friendly experience and sometimes a lie can better the truth of a war story. Within the article “Voicing Vietnam” it states, “ Tim O’Brien, who two decades earlier was a soldier in Vietnam. His account of what happened — amid the hamlets and forests of the Batangan Peninsula and in other areas of operation — to him and the other members of his platoon is punctuated by rueful, sometimes anguished reflections on the elusiveness of meaning and the fraught relationship between truth and invention.” Throughout the novel, there are different stories for each chapter that are all based upon being at war, however each story that is told are about different results that occur within the soldier's emotional state and also how each cope with their fellow soldier’s death. What O’Brien does to these stories that aren’t real, he continues to do small twists

Robert R. Harris affrims “Embarrassment, the author reveals in ''On the Rainy River,'' is why he, or rather the fictional version of himself, went to Vietnam. He almost went to Canada instead. What stopped him, ironically, was fear. ''All those eyes on me,'' he writes, ''and I couldn't risk the embarrassment. . . . I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. . . . I was a coward. I went to the war.” Tim O’Brien was afraid to go to war, he wasn’t capable of having to kill someone or even to have the courage to fight for what other believed was right. He didn’t agree with the war but that wasn’t the cause as to why he wanted to escape to Canada, he wanted to avoid being drafted and humiliating himself by not wanting to go to war and having others judge him for making that