Reading Response #3: Contextualizing

Irene Holmes
Ms. Darrow
ENG 140
June 20, 2009

Reading Response #3: Contextualizing
The Rainy River
O’Brien brings his audience back in time in the short story, The Rainy River, by using dates, name of landmarks and names of the characters. O’Brien begins by telling his audience that he has never told this story to anyone because of the shame it brought him. O’Brien portrays a young man who receives a draft letter in the summer of 1968 right after he graduates college and faced with a decision that will impact his life forever. He was against the Vietnam War because he believed that it was not justified enough to have lives taken. Despite his disposition, he was unable to get out of being drafted and his home town and family impose pressure that young men should serve their country.. With emotions running high, O’Brien decides to make a run for the Canadian border to escape from the U.S. draft for military. As he ventures closer to Canada O’Brien is welcomed into a resort run by an elderly man who lives right along a river which divides the United States and Canada. During his stay he learns about himself and comes to a final decision, to drafted or not to be drafted.
Based on the reading O’Brien receives a draft letter for the Vietnam War in “June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College…a war I hated. I was only twenty one years old.“. (O’Brien 630). Based on internet research the “United States involvement in Vietnam war dated from 1948 to 1973...December 1, 1969 marked the date of the first draft lottery held since 1942...affecting men between 18 and 26 years old.“ (http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/Vietnam/). This allows the reader to place themselves in that part of time while reading the short story and the dates are relevant to time and era. Since this website was last modified march 2009 contains contact information, the resource is reliable.
During the Vietnam War, by 1972 more than “70,000 draft evaders and deserters were living in Canada” (http://www.landscaper.net/draft.htm), which was O’Brien’s initial goal to flee into Canada to avoid drafting, “in mid-July I began thinking serious about Canada. the border lay a few hundred miles north, an eight hour drive. Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop…Run.” (O’Brien 633). This website was last modified March 2009 and also has contact numbers which makes it a reliable source. Being able to find sources with statistical information gives the readers that men like O’Brien did really flee into Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War era.
The O’Brien’s place of exile during his run to Canada was at a “fishing resort called Tip Top Lodge…a place to lie low for a day or two.” (O’Brien 636) which was along Rainy River, Minnesota. This river is “85 miles long that forms part of the U.S.-Canada border separating northern Minnesota and Northwestern Ontario” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainy_River). The name and landmark is detailed information allowing the reader to visualize and place themselves in the story making it more realistic. The website was last updated June 2009 and has no contact numbers, so again one would have to be careful about using the site as a resource and anyone can state anything without facts so again not a good resource.
O’Brien is welcome into the lodge by an elderly man name “Elroy Berdahl: eighty-one years old, skinny and shrunken and mostly bald…as he peered up at me I felt a strange sharpness, almost painful, a cutting sensation, as if his gaze were somehow slicing me open…the old man took one look and went to the heart of things-a kid in trouble.” (O’Brien 636). Berdahl was quiet and kept to himself, without question, O’Brien had a hunch “that he already knew. At least the basic. After all it was 1968 and guys were burning draft cards, and Canada was just a boat ride away. Elroy Berdahl was no hick.” (O’Brien 637). Berdahl gave O’Brien his own personal time to figure out his inner personal dilemma and feeling of the draft, so when the day came to be release out from Berdahl’s wings, “he must have planned it. I’ll never be certain, of course, but I think he meant to bring me up against the realities, to guide me across the river and take me to the edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I chose a life for myself.” (O’Brien 642). This Elroy Berdahl character is a name of a real person living in Minnesota and now 99 years of age based on the internet search under white pages. (http://www.whitepages.com/). This is a good resource site in finding names but does not give the life history of the person. To prove if Berdahl is the real person in the story would be hard to prove, because there is no bibliography.
As O’Brien’s shame to ever tell his story brought him courage to make a stand on a personal and emotional decision about being drafted to go to war during the Vietnam War and to admit to one’s self on courage. “The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forest and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and the home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.” (O’Brien 645).
Oates, Joyce Carol and Beha, Christopher R. The ecco anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction. 1. New York, NY. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008 O’Brien, Tim. On The Rainy River.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/Vietnam/
http://www.landscaper.net/draft.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainy_River
http://www.whitepages.com/