Comparing The Company Man And The Unknown Citizen

Life can bring unexpected events that individuals might not be prepared to confront. This was the case in the short story “On The Rainy River” written by Tim O’Brien. Young Tim is drafted to the military to fight the American War in Vietnam. He faces the conflict of whether he should or should not go to war after being drafted. The thought of giving up the future he has worked so hard for and instead fight a war “for uncertain reasons” terrifies him. He must make the agonizing decision of whether to pursue his personal desire and in turn be shamed by society or conform, sacrificing his ideals in the process.

Both characters act completely different when confronted by another character in the story. The man is more concerned about the safety of the boy and himself. However, the boy wants to do anything and everything to help anyone that they come across. For example, during one situation in the story, a thief attempted to steal all their belongings. When the man caught him, the boy started crying, “Papa?...Papa please don’t kill the man” (McCarthy 256). In contrast, after the man caught the thief the man held him at gun point and said, “If you dont put down the knife and get away from the cart...I’m going to blow your brains out” (McCarthy 256).The man is more concerned with their safety, whereas the boy is concerned about the wellbeing and safety of the thief. The man acts in a similar manner to Ely when the boy wants to give him food, “In the morning they stood in the road and he and the boy argued about what to give the old man” (McCarthy 173). These two characters can collide sometimes when deciding on whether or not they should give food to people like Ely or “The Lightning Man”. Not only are they different when confronted by another character, they are also different on the way they look at arising situations.

Both stories, CTC and TRBOC, are about the hardships of war and the context makes it very clear that that is what it is about. Though “CTC”’s context made it very obvious that war was the stories context. It took TRBOC about a paragraph for the context of war to hit most readers if they didn’t know what the writing was about. +It proves that both context are the same showing that both situations are almost exactly similar.

When the Vietnam war took place, many people protested against it as they believed that the war’s purpose was illogical and unreasonable. Many people tried to protest against it in different ways; for example, men who were drafted to the war fled the country - as a form of protest - in order to dodge the draft. Stories like “On the Rainy River” and “John Strickland: Draft Dodger” show how men reacted when they were drafted to the Vietnam War, a war which they were opposed to. In the story “On the Rainy River” - the story was written by an author was also named Tim O’Brien just like the main character in the story - O’Brien was opposed to the war as he believed that the war was unjust and unreasonable and saw it as unnecessary. He tried to flee the country to dodge the draft but he couldn’t bring himself to do it as he felt too guilty and ashamed of his decision to avoid fighting in the war. However, in the story “John Strickland: Draft Dodger” - the story was written by John Strickland himself - Strickland, a man who also disagreed with the reason for the war, fled the country as he didn’t believe in fighting in a war which had no solid purpose. From his perspective, fleeing the country to dodge the draft was his way of protesting against the war. Both Strickland and O’Brien didn’t agree or support the war for similar reasons. Yet, only Strickland stuck to his convictions and dodged the draft to show that he was against the war whereas O’Brien wasn’t

In comparison with the two stories and being under the government and the “World Society,” having to understand of them two and how they relate of how the society not having the freedom, being controlled by their own future. The people or the society, are afraid to prevail fear to take action and willing to do it without exception.

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

One of the main conflicts in the story are man vs. society and man vs. himself..

Outsider’s are usually an outlier of a group, and are viewing the group from an outside point of view, rather than actually in the action. Not being part of the group can oftentimes cause them to feel left out, because they don’t have a lot in common with the main group of people. In the short story, “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the main character, who 's also happens to be named Tim O’Brien, is a young adult who happens to get drafted in the war two months after he graduates college. However he doesn’t believe in the war, and in college he even made a couple of editorials about how the war was wrong. Tim not

Both narratives compare as timeless tales of reputable heroes. They both include similar plots of long journeys back home. The main characters’ flaws are arrogance which is the source of many of their troubles.

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

How maybe he was a scholar and maybe his parents were farmers.  Then O'Brien goes on to talk of maybe why this young man was in the army, and maybe why he was fighting;  these are something’s that are taught in the schools.  O'Brien states that the man may have joined because he was struggling for independence, juts like all the people that were fighting with him.  Maybe this man had been taught from the beginning that to defend the land was a mans highest duty and privilege.  Then on the other hand maybe he was not a good fighter, and maybe in poor health but had been told to fight and could not ask any questions.  These reasons are all reasons that are taught in textbooks; they go along with the idea of the draft.  Some people go fight because they want to and others go because they are told they have to. How do you tell these people apart in the heat of battle or when they are dead?  The way that O'Brien starts to describe the young man as someone who was small and frail, and maybe had plans for a bright future puts sorrow in the readers heart, in that all his plans can not happen for him or maybe the family that is longing for his return.  It also shows the regret that maybe going on in the killers’ mind.  For O'Brien to be writing on how this young mans life has come to a sudden end and his plans for the future is over is intriguing.  Then to add to that he had the story written through the eyes of the soldier that ended this young mans life.  The

The author describes this citizen as being an overall regular man in society, who did not change or impact the world by any means. He was a normal man who bought a paper every day

Overall, these are two great stories that give the reader a better idea of what war can and most likely will do to a person. Although there are differences, the similarities are

Not everything was as pretty as it seemed, their family had issues that they had to overcome and the fear of loosing the battle away and at home was something that he struggled with on a daily basis when he was young. His mother was left with the entire burden when his father left and it eventually became too much to handle. His mother became an alcoholic and he and his family suffered tremendously from his mother’s sickness. He felt like if he had let his father down when he came home to find this out. Living with all females and putting up with them was too much for him that he decided to convince his father to send him to military school. This was the best thing that happened to him, because from here on he lived an Army world.

Tim O’Brien tells the story of him and his platoon in Vietnam as well as a little about what each had experienced before and after the war. He tells each story in different way to elaborate on different things that happened around the same time. This complicated method emphasizes how he and each of his platoon member felt together while in Nam.It may jump from tale to tale in the stroy, but it has a clear message. In the story The Things They Carried O’Brien explains in different ways about being away from home can cause dramatic changes to someone in an alienating or a beneficial way.