Tim O’Brien’s Short Story “On the Rainy River” as an Elegy

An elegy is a lament for the dead, or maybe it can even be a lament for the death of a way of life. In Tim O’Brien’s story “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien tells in detail his story about the death of his way of life when he was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. It was a war he did not believe in and did not want to die for. His convictions were strong and firm. He “had taken a modest stand against the war” and now he was being forced to give up his life for it (O’Brien 173). He felt that he was too smart and too good to simply be told he had to go fight some stupid war, and it must be a mistake.

He compared how he felt about the war to a former job he held gutting pigs and removing blood clots from the dead carcasses. Death was not a pretty sight, and he had the experience to know what it smelled like. Killing and gutting a pig made him smell like dead pigs. “The stink was always there” (O’Brien 175).

O’Brien felt that going to war would be the death of him in many ways. He thought it could be the end of his American way of life because he highly considered running away to Canada and becoming a Canadian so he would not have to show up for the draft. His life as an American was in danger of dying. “At some point in mid-July [he] began thinking seriously about Canada” (O’Brien 175). His life as a college graduate was in…