"On The Rainy River"

Tim O'Brien has a way of writing with such emotion that you can feel how brutally real his stories are. The Things They Carried is a series of short stories written by O'Brien about American soldiers in the Vietnam War. His story "On The Rainy River" is the longest and most in depth story of the four we have read so far. What I enjoyed the most about this short story is that it shows the real feelings and thoughts a person goes through when they are initially sent into the draft. As we think of these soldiers as heroes, which they are without a doubt, no one ever seemed to stop and think how they are feeling. O'Brien shares that he had a serious thought of fleeing away to Canada, but he wonders what his family and community will think of him. One day, he simply loses it. He flees his town without a second thought, and heads on up north along the Rainy River. He decides to stop at a fishing resort in Minnesota, where he meets Elroy Berdhal. Elroy takes him on a boating trip and O'Brien realizes that they must have been approaching Canadian territory. As Elroy stops the boat, Tim O'Brien looks at the Canada shoreline only a few yards in front of him and starts to cry. Even though his heart and his brain were telling him that running away to Canada was the right choice, deep down he knew that his family and country needed him. It is a shame that it took him almost crossing the Canadian border to realize where he should really be, but it is such an interesting take on a war story. You can tell with each word that O'Brien writes how real these feelings were and that just simply amazes me.