Chapter 4

"On the Rainy River"

Important Sections of the Chapter

1). "This is one story I've never told before. Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife." (pg. 39)

ANALYSIS

From the first sentence of this chapter a confessionary tone is set. Through the use of the word "never" the author strives to impress the audience and trigger their curiosity into what happened in the story the author is about to reveal that forced him to hide it for so many years after the war. 

The fact that he repeats the words "not to my" when mentioning the members of his family symbolizes the idea that this is an unresolved story, a secret one, that Tim O'Brien hid from his mother, father, brother, sister and wife because it most certainly, made him feel ashamed. However, once again, we readers are invaded by the question of the "What happened?". 

2). "...I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons." (pg. 40)

ANALYSIS

This quote talks about some of the feelings a young Tim O'Brien had towards the war when it was still in development. Although he recognizes himself as "young" and "naive" with no true experience about the world, he expresses a subtle hate towards war through the phrase "certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons" where the "certain blood" represents the blood of innocent people, like the soldiers for instance, and the "uncertain reasons" symbolizes O'Brien's belief that the Vietnam war had no defined cause for its occurrence. 

3). "It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of the cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead." (pg. 41)

ANALYSIS

This fragment is another view into the author's mind. In it, Tim O'Brien expresses his disagreement to the development of the Vietnamese war and in his point of view he considers it a war without a "knowing why" meaning, a defined cause. As well, he emphasizes the idea that "war is cruel" and that it leads to mistakes, for instance the death of people. He concludes this section of the book with the sentence "once people are dead, you can 't make them undead" which suggests that war is the synonym of death and that once you join it, there's no turning back. 

4). "I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile. I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure." (pgs. 44-45) 

ANALYSIS 

This quote connects to the idea of "the fear of blushing" discussed on chapter 1. In it, we see how the author admits to the reader, and only to him, his fear of dying in a war he doesn't understand, but we also take part in an internal dilemma where the question "going or leaving" is always present.

We are faced with the author's fear of embarrassment and how deep inside he wants to flee to Canada and forget the war and the deaths that come with it, but how his idea of "what will other people say about him" stops him before he comes to a concrete decision of whether or not he wants to go to the war. 

However, the main idea of this fragment is to get the reader thinking "what makes a coward a coward? And how do we judge him like that? By what actions?" because although we sympathize with O'Brien's fear of dying we are also at a crossroad of what we would do if we were in a similar situation. Would we also fear ridicule and censure?   

5). "What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame...I was ashamed to be there at the Tip Top Lodge. I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing." (pg. 52)

ANALYSIS

This quote belongs to the section of the book where the young Tim O'Brien decides to leave his hometown and travel down to Canada to escape the war. On his journey, he stops by a lodge where he meets a man that he claims "saved his life." He stays in the lodge for six days where we readers are exposed to his mind and ideas. We feel his fear, a sense of sickness, of going to war and dying there, and we are exposed to his rage for having been chosen as a possible soldier. 

However, the author also exposes us, in this quote, to the fear of blushing and the power of conscience. O'Brien claims that he is "ashamed to be doing the right thing." But what does this "right thing" mean ? Well, for him it symbolizes, not being part of something he doesn't understand. 

Nevertheless, he is ashamed, deep inside, of thinking the way he does (the Vietnamese War is absurd) and thus he often, in this chapter, is attacked by his conscience, who acts as the force that pulls him back to the war through the "fear of embarrassment", and it is this conscience that tells him that it is wrong to flee the war for the coward reason that he doesn't want to die in it. And these are the dilemmas (him vs. conscience and him vs. war) that are presented in this quote. 

6). "Now, perhaps, you can understand why I've never told this story before. It's not just the embarrassment of the tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart....I would not do what I should do. I would not swim from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave..." (pg. 57)

This fragment belongs to the climax of the chapter as it is the section where the narrator realizes he would not do the right thing. In this quote, the narrator explains why he hasn't told this story before and it is because of his inability to decide, because of his "paralysis", as he calls it, of not being capable of saying "I'm not going to the war because I'm scared and I don't want to die."

We readers are confronted with a vulnerable character, one that accepts defeat, and specifically in this quote, accepts the fact that the "macho-man" posture all humans claim having is just a fake attempt to cover our sensible and childish side, the one who is scared of dying, the one who is scared of becoming a murderer. We understand how this "tough-guy" fantasy dissolves when we are presented with a cruel reality, as war is, one that comes with hard decisions and thus hard consequences, and we realize that it takes even more courage to follow a dream than to assist a war.

7). "...I would go to the war - I would kill and maybe die - because I was embarrassed not so. That was the sad thing." (pg. 59) 

This quote is an emphasis to the greatest burdens of a soldier: "the fear of blushing" and "the fear of embarrassment." It summarizes how they rule a person's life, even one that doesn't truly believe in the war, simply because of the terror of what other's might think of your actions. 

In it we see how the conscience beats the narrator and how he cannot stand the probable mockery of those who would have judge him if he didn't attend war. He decides to die at war and be considered a hero than not die in it and be considered a coward, which incites reflection in us readers and makes us think: "could we consider Tim O'Brien's actions, a young boy's actions, true acts of cowardice?" 

8). "...and 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." (pg. 61) 

These sentences finalize the chapter "On the Rainy River" and for me, they are of vital importance because they have an ironic meaning. Usually, those who attend war are considered heroes, brave men that fight for their country, but O'Brien classifies himself, in this quote, as "a coward" because he participates in the war. So what is the irony? 

The irony lies in the idea that Tim O'Brien is a coward for fighting. However, the essence of the chapter is discovering why he consideres himself to be a coward if he fought in war, and this is because he wasn't able to say no. He wasn't capable of running to Canada and leaving something he didn't belief in. He wasn't capable of standing up to his beliefs and following what he considered right. As a matter of fact, the cowardice lies in his lack of bravery, not for not wanting to die, but for not being able to flee. 

This quote presents us a different meaning of bravery, where this word is not how much you can fight or how many enemies you can kill for your country, but how much strength and courage you have for following your dreams and going against the "fear of embarrassment."