American soldiers' harbored bitterness toward their hometown and ordinary average citizen in America - Essay Example

?other.’ They are compelled to respond in such a manner because they are confronted by what seems to them, and is, an overwhelming apprehension of injustice. But, while going inward and seeing others as the source of their anxiety, they are paradoxically fleeing themselves. If they feel divorced from civilians, sometimes reflect bitterly about them, but feel strong impulses to still communicate with them, it is because these young men are consumed with the dread of others’ opinions of their behavior, the choices they have made or which have been thrust upon them and resent being in this position.

Risking death and pain in a war they know to be questionable, if not unjustified, they flee to isolate themselves from what they most fear: disapproval. everyone uncomfortable. It is this moral dilemma that Tim O’Brien addresses in ‘On the Rainy River.’ It is also his reason for fleeing, and for seeing in others the cause of his crushing anxiety. In the first paragraph, O’Brien admits his reticence to tell this story about himself, certain it will cause embarrassment – “a sudden need to be elsewhere.”(39) The mere suggestion that he would refuse service in Vietnam upon receiving his draft notice, would play the coward rather than the hero, instills in him shame.

But his dilemma is real: he has no choice but to agree to “fight a war [he] hated,” in which “[c]certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.”(40) That summer became for him one of “moral confusion.”(40) One feels in every word on the page O’Brien’s suffocation, his “moral split.”(44) One also understands his outrage and how he expresses it. This war is not a war he chose. He considers it unjustified. But in his conservative prairie town of southern Minnesota he can find no one who shares his thoughts – though it must be admitted that he makes no attempt to find and speak to anyone about his angst.

Patrons of the Gobbler Café on Main Street represent to him the