Summary vs. Analysis

On the Rainy River tells one short story of the author, Tim O’Brien, back in the late 1960’s and finding out he is being drafted into the war. He had just graduated college and was looking forward to starting his future. When he got drafted, he didn’t know what to do, he did not tell his parents and especially did not want to fight a war he did not believe in, and did not know much about. He decided to run away with hopes of going across the Canadian boarder; this was his only chance to escape the war. After driving a couple days, he located a house and decided to know on the door. “Even after two decades I can close my eyes and return to that porch at the Tip Top Lodge. I can see the old guy staring at me. Elroy Berdahl: eighty-one years old, skinny and shrunken and mostly bald” (46).

O’Brien stayed with Elroy for six days, and repaid him by working around the lodge. On the sixth day of staying, Elroy and O’Brien went out fishing on the Rainy River, on one side was American ground, and crossing that river meant he had crossed the Canadian boarder. O’Brien was torn on whether to cross over to Canada to state his new found freedom, or to turn around and head back home and fight the war. In the end, he decided he must go home and face his fears, the Vietnam War.

After reaching the Canadian boarder while fishing with Elroy, O’Brien starts to feel the pressure of the war and everything going on around him. “A hallucination, I suppose, but it was as real as anything I would ever feel. I saw my parents calling to me from the far shoreline…like some outlandish sporting event: everybody screaming from the sidelines, rooting me on – a loud stadium roar” (55). Stuck between the two sides of what he sees as freedom and being stuck in a situation he does not believe is fair, he imagines all his family, friends and people he hardly knows standing on the American side cheering him on to come home. His emotions have gotten the best of him, and fear is the only thing holding him back from returning home and drafting for the war. His decision to turn around and go home was based on his beliefs on what were right and partly the influence of the people he knew he would be leaving behind. “…then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (58). He faced his fears of the war, went and made it back. 

Sources

1.  "Tim O'Brien." Pirate's Alley. Web. 3 Oct 2010. .