On The Rainy River -.pdf

On The Rainy River from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien above: a detail of the Rainy River image swiped from ”“ In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester Col - lege, I was draft - ed to fight a war I hated. In On The Rainy River the narrator, Tim O’Brien, tells a story that he’s “never told before,”(40). As he tells us this story, he recounts he drive from his home, through the Midwest, and to the Rainy River. On one side of the water is America, and a certain trip to Vietnam. On the other side is Can - ada, freedom, and a virtual guarantee of a lengthy exile, apart from friends and family. After several days on the river, with Canada “twenty yards”(56) away, Tim realizes that “Canada had e a pitiful fantasy” and that he “would not do what [he] should do,”(57). Strangely, rather than celebrate his courage for staying, he claims that “I was a coward. I went to war,”(61). O’Brien claims that he is embarassed by this