On A Rainy River

In the course of our lifetime we are caught in situations that we truly don't want to be in.

When all is going well you occasionally get that bump in the road and it seems as if all is

disrupted. There are times when things become unavoidable to the point where we are left with

two choices, to run, or to go through with it. Tim O'Brien found himself somewhere he never

thought he would be, Minnesota. He was on the run from that infamous little slip of paper, his

draft note. Tim was to be a soldier in the Vietnam War and he could not possibly imagine

anything worse. His world had suddenly come to a complete halt and he simply could not

bring himself to confront anyone or anything. This force that compels us to do the unthinkable

is our own emotions resulting from what we think other people will speculate.

In this chapter we learn a little more about the narrator as a person and the most

important passage of this section, I believe was on page 59. "All those eyes on me-the town,

the whole universe- and I couldn't risk the embarrassment. It was as if there was an audience to

my life...Traitor They yelled. Turncoat Pussy I felt myself blush. I couldn't tolerate it...

I couldn't make myself brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all

it