In Tim O’brien’s famous book,The Things They Carried, he speaks about many people, stories, and events that took place during the war; although he does claim that the book is actually not about war, but about peace. During the fourth chapter ,on the Rainy River, O’brien recounts a different scene from his life; specifically an event that happened before the war. An event he quote: “Never told anyone” until the publishing of his book. Throughout this chapter and his memories, he talks about courage; his own courage that is, which he believes is non-existent because of the war since he calls himself a coward. How could that be though, many of us wonder. How and why would a soldier who fought for his country feel as if he is a coward? Is Tim O’brien the only person who felt like this about the war, or were there others who too felt as if they were nothing more than shameful cowards?
One subject our narrator, O’brien, touches on many times throughout the entire book, is his opinion on war. O’brien never supported the war and he made that clear through his mild protests and college newspaper publishes against the war, since he saw no purpose to it: “…the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law.” Once he graduated college though, he was drafted into the war, meaning he had no say wether he’d want to fight for his country or not. O’brien didn’t look at war as some sort of justice seeking, he saw it as murder, brutality and blood spill. So when he got the news of him being drafted, he was torn between two paths; one was to join the army and serve in Vietnam by taking part in the actions of war, the other was to run away to Canada, to cross the border and never return. O’brien describes how badly he wanted to leave everything behind and run away to Canada saying: ” Both my conscience and instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop.” but he feared he would get caught by authorities or worse, be known as a coward and losing respectability.
Later one day at work in the slaughterhouse, he suddenly got the urge to make a run for it. He left work, got in his car and drove north along the Rainy River, the natural border between America and Canada. Along the way O’brien still struggled with his morals and thoughts and thought about going back home. Exhausted and upset, still on the U.S side of the border, he decided to stop at Tip Top, an old down-at-heel resort owned by a man named Elroy Berdahl, whom O’brien mentions as his hero. Elroy rented out a cabin to O’brien so he could rest and O’brien, in exchange would help him with chores. Elroy was a man who kept to himself and didn’t pry into O’brien’s business while O’brien continued to feel very stressed, nervous and most of all ashamed for running away so he would assist Elroy by doing more chores in order to try and forget about his troubles.
1913-1999
grave memorial
On his last day at the resort, Elroy took O’brien to the Rainy River for fishing. Throughout this scene, the narrator makes many comments about what he felt and the thoughts flashing through his mind, how he wanted to jump off the boat and swim past the border but the overbearing feeling of shame wouldn’t allow it. he describes himself feeling shameful, helpless and that he was crying, all the while Elroy kept quiet, pretending to not notice O’brien’s breakdown. Finally, O’brien makes the toughest decision of his life, not influenced by his morals, but by his shame, which is why he thinks of himself as a coward : “…I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination…I couldn’t make myself brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was. And then I submitted. I would go to war — I would kill and maybe die– because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried.”
Minnesota–Ontario
To admit that he was embarrassed and ashamed to stick with his morals and not go to war and making a decision that would most likely change his life for the worst, was probably the hardest pill to swallow, as it would have been for most of us. Unfortunately though, having to pick sides between our morals and what society thinks of us is a huge sacrifice we all have to make in life, especially with the big role shame plays in it. A very simple and small examples of this would be the very small choices we make in order to impress friends and family because we’re to embarrassed to swim against the current, just like O’brien.
This very concept makes me wonder about how many other soldiers and people on the battlefield went through the same thing. How many of them didn’t want to be there? How many of them were ashamed of being there but died as ‘heroes’? In my opinion this is a very intense and unfortunate concept because there could have been hundreds, if not thousands of people who, like O’brien, felt ashamed of who they were and what they were doing but they never got the chance to come clean and seek peace within themselves. We like to believe each and every soldier who fought for us and this country is a hero and of course they are because these people put their own life on the line so we could have a future like today but, I like to believe they are heroes because of the emotional weight they had on their shoulders, the constant moral battles they had within themselves and yet they still fought for us, wether it was to find some sort of courage within themselves or to not be known as a coward by their peers.
Mental health is just as important as physical health and I believe we need to talk about that a lot more when we discuss war and soldiers and how much their mental health, specifically the negative aspects of it like shame, played a role in the decisions they made and the way some of them felt during their last moments. It’s important to note that these aspects affect all of us and it’s important to remind each other that it’s okay to feel afraid of taking a stand against society, what shouldn’t be okay is for you to be ashamed of your morals, your opinions and who you are. You are in charge of your decisions and choices, do not let shame take that away from you.