summary vs. analysis

SUMMARY VS. ANALYSIS


I read, On the rainy river by Tim O’Brien, it was a story from the author’s own life experience. In the story a young man, Tim, was drafted into the Vietnam war and did not know what to do and was filled with anger and shock. He describes his life in 1968 in his town of Worthington, Minnesota. Tim tells about his job in a pig slaughter house as a “declotter”. Tim dissolves blood clots on the pigs head and neck with a water pressured gun and he despises his job and always smells of pig grease. He then receives a draft letter and does not no what to do, he contemplates whether to go to war or run away.
Tim later is filled with cowardice and drives towards the Canadian border, he does
not go across though. He ends up at The Tip Top Lodge, where he meets a man named
Elroy Berdahl. Elroy has an idea why he is alone away from home, but never question
Tim, he just gives him a room and his daily meals. Tim starts doing odd jobs for Elroy
they become good acquaintances. Elroy then takes Tim on the Rainy River towards the
Canadian border. Elroy knows that is where Tim wants to go, but Tim cannot force
himself to run away. Tim goes through a series of flash backs and memories and begins
to weep. Elroy understands that Tim will not go and they return to the lodge. The next day
Tim knows that he must return home and eventually goes to war in Vietnam.
When doing my analysis on this story I found that Tim O’Brien has had to go
through quite a bit in order to make his decision on desertion. He was shocked by
the draft letter. “I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking just a silent howl. A million things at once-I was to good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, to everything”(O’Brien 41). Tim thought he had done everything he could to avoid the war, he had scholarships to Harvard and was a smart but he still was drafted. This showed how, no matter how educated people were they could not escape the war. He goes on to say that the people who support the war should be the ones to fight it. I think that would be a great idea so that those people could get a taste of what war is. O’Brien was able to convey all the emotions and all the shame he felt when he was planning to run away. He described how all the people in his town would talk about him being a coward, it was sad to know that to run away from something that was unjust was to be more of a coward than to fight for it. “I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave”(O’Brien 57). To me this means that only certain draftees were brave enough to stand up for the right thing and not go to war by whatever means.Overall, this was a good story to make me understand all that went through ones mind if they got drafted for Vietnam and a good example of how people made the big decision.