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On the rainy river by tim o'brien summary
On the rainy river by tim o'brien critical essay
On the rainy river by tim o'brien critical essay
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In Tim O’Brien’s “On the Rainy River”, the environment and it’s surroundings are correlated to the daily life and emotions of Tim O’Brien. These locations each represent a mental state in which Tim is using as his cognition for the events around him. For example, both Canada and Minnesota represent the two ideals Tim struggles with. In Canada, Tim attains the freedom from the Vietnam war he desires, but also leaves his family his family and friends in the shadows of humiliation. Meanwhile, Minnesota represents the war he believes is unjustified; where he must live and fight for, although he does not want to see many mutilated bodies from his homeland. Both Canada and Minnesota are representations of where Tim can go but also represent his
Barry defines the Mississippi’s unpredictability through an “uncoiling rope.” One cannot experience an act such as that of an uncoiling rope, in it’s smooth, but quick movements. Its destination cannot be anticipated and its course of action can only be speculated. By using a single phrase, like “uncoiling rope,” Barry guides his audience to a complete picture of the fascinating Mississippi. He gives life to the Mississippi by relating it to a snake. His snake-related diction, such as “roils” and “uncoiling” present the river with lifelike qualities that extend Barry’s purpose in saying that the incredible river can actually stand on it’s own. Furthermore, Barry describes the river in similes in order to compare the Mississippi to a snake, in a sense of both power and grace. The river “devours itself”, “sucking” at the surface around it, and “scouring out holes” in its depths. Barry’s combination of personifying diction and similes provide his audience with a relation in which one understands the Mississippi’s paradox of strength and unpredictability, and
The line “I feel not wet so much as painted and glittered” forms a contrasting image to that of the swamp because the consonance of the author’s word choice, “painted” and “glittered,” provide a more positive connotation. The author’s word choice plays a major role in this polarized imagery as well as the connection between speaker and swamp. By using the word “painted,” it is as if the swamp becomes the artist, and the speaker becomes the canvas, meaning that through the struggles of the swamp, the speaker has been shaped into the person she is “after all these years.” Oliver also uses a metaphor, comparing the speaker to “a poor dry stick given one more chance by the whims of swamp water,” which relates to the growth and strength that the swamp’s and ultimately life’s struggles have evoked from the
Tim O'Brien's "On the Rainy River" Tim O'Brien's "On the Rainy River" is a true story told by a 41 year old who died at the age of 21. The fact that O'Brien is writing this 20 years later adds a new aspect to the story. He describes himself as a young man with the world in his back pocket. O'Brien has just graduated from Macalester College and has a free ride to Harvard. Unfortunately, his storybook world collapses when he receives a draft notice for the Vietnam war, a war that he has "taken a modest stand against"(44) in 1968.
In the chapter the “Rainy River” of the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien conveys a deep moral conflict between fleeing the war to go to Canada versus staying and fighting in a war that he does not support. O’Brien is an educated man, a full time law student at Harvard and a liberal person who sees war as a pointless activity for dimwitted, war hungry men. His status makes him naive to the fact that he will be drafted into the war and thus when he receives his draft notice, he is shocked. Furthermore, his anti-war sentiments are thoroughly projected, and he unravels into a moral dilemma between finding freedom in Canada or standing his ground and fighting. An image of a rainy river marking the border between Minnesota and Canada is representative of this chapter because it reflects O’Brien’s moral division between finding freedom in Canada or standing his ground and fighting in the Vietnam war.
The late author and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch once said “We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” The general argument made by Tim O’Brien in his short story “On the Rainy River” is that an individual’s self-perception may skew the line between illusion and reality. More specifically O’Brien argues that the line may be discovered if an individual is able to come to terms with their perception. Illusion and reality are found to be confused throughout the novella “On the Rainy River” as a journey through one’s own mind is taken in order to reach a life-altering decision.
From the opening we see that Chopin intends to use the storm to move the
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions”, said Albert Einstein to express how imagination can foreshadow an uncertain and ever-changing future. Imagination is a unique ability that only humans possess; it can affect an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and decisions and is a technique used by individuals towards innovation, creativity, and development. On the other hand, imagination can also influence decision making and even determine the fate of an individual’s life, which is shown in the short story On the Rainy River, by Tim O’Brien. Tim imagines himself in both situations: one of which is when he leaves to go to war and one in which Tim considers not going to war and moving to Canada. These thoughts of an uncertain
In Joseph Boydens short story “Abitibi Canyon”, the narrator is the mother of Remi, a child with a mental disability. They live in a reserve where the people argue about the construction of a dam in their river. She is against it because it will ruin the place where she likes to camp with her Shirley, Mary and Suzanne. The way she sees the dam is an important image. She pictures it as a “concrete monster lying in our river and controlling it like some greedy giant” (364). The dam will ruin a place that has a lot of personal significance to her.
Life can sometime bring unwanted events that individuals might not be willing to face it. This was the conflict of O’Brien in the story, “On The Rainy River”. As the author and the character O’Brien describes his experiences about the draft to the Vietnam War. He face the conflict of whether he must or must not go to the war, in this moment O’Brien thinking that he is so good for war, and that he should not be lost in that way. He also show that he disagree with the consbet of the war, how killing people will benefit the country. In addition O’Brien was terrifying of the idea of leaving his family, friends, and everything that he has done in the past years.
The setting takes place mostly in the woods around Andy’s house in Pennsylvania. The season is winter and snow has covered every inch of the woods and Andy’s favorite place to be in, “They had been in her dreams, and she had never lost' sight of them…woods always stayed the same.” (327). While the woods manage to continually stay the same, Andy wants to stay the same too because she is scared of growing up. The woods are where she can do manly activities such as hunting, fishing and camping with her father. According to Andy, she thinks of the woods as peaceful and relaxing, even when the snow hits the grounds making the woods sparkle and shimmer. When they got to the campsite, they immediately started heading out to hunt for a doe. Andy describes the woods as always being the same, but she claims that “If they weren't there, everything would be quieter, and the woods would be the same as before. But they are here and so it's all different.” (329) By them being in the woods, everything is different, and Andy hates different. The authors use of literary elements contributes to the effect of the theme by explaining what the setting means to Andy. The woods make Andy happy and she wants to be there all the time, but meanwhile the woods give Andy a realization that she must grow up. Even though the woods change she must change as
Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.
The relationship you have with others often has a direct effect on the basis of your very own personal identity. In the essay "On The Rainy River," the author Tim O'Brien tells about his experiences and how his relationship with a single person had effected his life so dramatically. It is hard for anyone to rely fully on their own personal experiences when there are so many other people out there with different experiences of their own. Sometimes it take the experiences and knowledge of others to help you learn and build from them to help form your own personal identity. In the essay, O'Brien speaks about his experiences with a man by the name of Elroy Berdahl, the owner of the fishing lodge that O'Brien stays at while on how journey to find himself. The experiences O'Brien has while there helps him to open his mind and realize what his true personal identity was. It gives you a sense than our own personal identities are built on the relationships we have with others. There are many influence out there such as our family and friends. Sometimes even groups of people such as others of our nationality and religion have a space in building our personal identities.
The world of Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” exists through the mostly unemotional eyes of the character Nick. Stemming from his reactions and the suppression of some of his feelings, the reader gets a sense of how Nick is living in a temporary escape from society and his troubles in life. Despite the disaster that befell the town of Seney, this tale remains one of an optimistic ideal because of the various themes of survival and the continuation of life. Although Seney itself is a wasteland, the pine plain and the campsite could easily be seen as an Eden, lush with life and ripe with the survival of nature.
In the Lake of the Woods is a fictional mystery written by Tim O'Brien. Through the book we learn that our lovers, husbands, and wives have qualities beyond what our eyes can see. John Wade and Kathy are in a marriage so obscure that their secrets lead to an emotional downfall. After John Wade loss in his Senatorial Campaign, his feeling towards Kathy take on a whole different outlook. His compulsive and obsessive behavior causes Kathy to distance herself from him. His war experience and emotional trauma are a major cause for his strange behavior. We remain pondering about Kathy's mysterious disappearance, which becomes fatal for her. Possible scenarios are presented in eight chapters marked 'Hypothesis', these chapters add a mysterious twist which can change our train of thought to 'maybe' or 'perhaps' this is the truth.
If I had a children in my class with an exceptionality I would keep it