On a Rainy River

The entire first paragraph of this chapter is worded in a way that builds excitement and incites a curiosity to continue reading. In my opinion it's almost anticlimactic in the way that the narrator makes it seem that he's about to tell a story about the time he murdered his neighbor but really he's recounting his fear and embarrassment about being drafted. Although this is the case, I enjoyed how this story gives detailed background information and establishes a point of view of one of the soldiers that have been present in this novel. I found Tim O'Brien's muted contemplation of escaping to Canada but only making it to the Minnesota border. Also I particularly liked the character of Elroy Berdahl who might serve as a foil to Tim's character as Tim is frantic for a decision to fighting but Elroy is old enough to have a great understanding of humans to not worry anymore. Tim changes in the way that significantly effects the way the rest of his life is going to be lived. If he had gone to Harvard and lived his life never experiencing something as a tremendous as the Vietnam War, who really knows the kind of person Tim would have become.

I found it very ironic that, at the time, a soft spoken being like Tim O'Brien would hold a job as gruesome as a pig declotter. It's ironic that this job which he describes as "standing eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood bath" is a precursor to war where you could be standing for 24 hours a day under a blazing sun watching the men and women and children around you die in an actual blood bath. The pigs that are decapitated, split down the length of the belly, pried open, eviscerated, and strung up by the hind hocks" would become human beings and it would all be real.