Summary v Analysis : On The Rainy River

The short story, “On the Rainy River,” is about Tim O’Brien’s experience when he got drafted. He starts off letting us know that he has never told this story to anyone, ever. He tells of himself as a young man pre-drafted and his feelings toward the war. He then starts to write and tell about when he got the letter and the emotional strife it caused him. He writes about his internal struggles with dealing with fighting and possibly dying as well as deserting and being exiled.

One day, while he was working at the local slaughter house, he feels something inside of him break. “…I felt something break open in my chest. I don’t know what it was. I’ll never know. But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical rupture…”(O’Brien, 46). He then leaves and starts to drive north but does not make it all the way to Canada. He stops at the rainy river and asks for a room at the Tip Top Lodge. After 6 days of being there, the man who gave him a room takes him fishing just by the border and O’Brien has his chance to escape. He does not take because if he did it would consider himself a coward. He then decides he must go to war.

Tim talks about himself as being a coward and that’s why he goes to war, not because he feels some sort of patriotism. He says it was the embarrassment of having to face his family and friends after running away that made him go. “I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not too” (O’Brien 59). I say it he was a coward anyway. He did not go to war to fight for freedom; he went because he had too. He says himself that he opposed the war. “In any case those were my convictions, and back in college I had taken a modest stand against the war” (O’Brien 41). To me it would be cowardice to stand back and let your values become compromised. Albeit, I do know it was the government of the United States’ hand that was compelling him to do it. However, post war, the deserters were pardoned by the President on their return so he would have been okay.