Spin/ On the Rainy River/

HMWK:  Here is the website for The Big Read with lots of interesting information and a 28 minute radio interview with Tim O'Brien:

www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/radioshow.php
Read the transcript and/or listen to the audio.

Read "The Dentist" and "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" for Monday

The Things They Carried Chapter 3, Spin

Sometimes the war can almost seem sweet or fun. Azar gives a young Vietnamese boy a candy bar. Mitchell Sanders picks lice from his body and mails them to his draft board (which sent him to war) in Ohio. "On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance." Chapter 3, pg. 32 Some of the men play checkers: it gives them a reassuring sense of order. In the game, there is always a winner and a loser.

Topic Tracking: Effects of War 2
Tim is forty-three now, and he is a writer. He cannot forget the deaths of his friends, like Kiowa or Curt Lemon. But the war is not all horrible. Sometimes they would ask Ted Lavender how the war was that day, and if he was high, he would say, "Mellow, man. We got ourselves a nice mellow war today." Chapter 3, pg. 33 Tim remembers the time they hired an old Vietnamese man to guide them through a mine-infested area. There were mines everywhere, but no one got hurt, and everyone grew to love the old man, who also liked them. The war is also boring though, despite all the dangers. Tim feels guilty that he is still writing about it--his daughter Kathleen tells him he should write about ponies--but Tim knows he has to write about his own life. He tells the story of a soldier who goes AWOL (absent without leave). The soldier has a wonderful time with a Red Cross nurse, but after a while he goes back to the war, even more ready to fight than before. His friends ask him what happened, and he says, "All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back." Chapter 3, pg. 35 Tim heard the story from Mitchell Sanders, who was probably making most of it up. But nevertheless, it is true, because Tim knows exactly how the man in the story feels.
Topic Tracking: Truth 2
Tim remembers many fragments of stories from Vietnam: Norman Bowker wishing his father didn't want him to get medals so badly, or Kiowa teaching the others a rain dance, or Azar blowing up Lavender's adopted puppy. Tim also remembers even smaller fragments: the moon above the rice paddies, or Henry Dobbins singing, a hand grenade, a young dead man, and Kiowa telling Tim he had had no other choice. Tim thinks that stories link the past and the future. They help you understand who you are and where you're going.
Topic Tracking: Effects of War 3

Discussion "On the rainy river"

On the Rainy River slides:

http://www.curriculumcompanion.org/public/lite/mcdougalLittell/ml10/pdf/ml10_u4p2_rainy.pdf

Adrienne Rich, "Diving Into the Wreck"
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rich/wreck.htm

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

The id, the ego, the super ego: Freud's theory

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm 

A thought about symbolism: Elroy's role (from Shmoop)

On the Rainy River

So, O'Brien didn't really work in a meatpacking plant the summer before he went to Vietnam, and he didn't go up to the Canadian border to try to get away from the war and then chicken out and return home. It's a symbol for his mental state at the time. He can't get the nightmarish idea of slaughter out of his head – it's all he can think about – and so he thinks about running away. He's on the edge. Eventually, though, he backs off the edge. He doesn't go to Canada.
Elroy Berdahl is an important symbol in all of this, as O'Brien explicitly states:
He was the true audience. He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them. (On the Rainy River.74)
If Berdahl is God (or your deity of choice – atheists, feel free to use the universe as a stand-in), then God is ambivalent here. He doesn't push Tim to make one choice or another, and he doesn't judge Tim either way. He's simply there, watching, and his presence is felt.

In small groups, please discuss "On a Rainy River":

(1) How do the opening sentences prepare you for the story: "This is one story I've never told before. Not to anyone"? What effect do they have on you, as a reader?

(2) Why does O'Brien relate his experience as a pig declotter? How does this information contribute to the story? Why go into such specific detail?

(3) What is Elroy Berdahl's role in this story? Would this be a better or worse story if young Tim O'Brien simply headed off to Canada by himself, without meeting another person?

(4) At the story's close, O'Brien almost jumps ship to Canada, but doesn't: "I did try. It just wasn't possible" (61). What has O'Brien learned about himself, and how does he return home as a changed person?

(5) Why, ultimately, does he go to war? Are there other reasons for going he doesn't list?

More questions for discussion:

Why is the first story told in the third person? What effect does it have on you as a reader to then switch to the first person in “Love”? O’Brien also uses the second person in this collection. For example, in “On the Rainy River,” the narrator, trying to decide whether to accept the draft or become a draft dodger, asks: “What would you do?” (page 56). Why does the author use these different perspectives?

Who is Elroy Bendahl, and why is he “the hero of [the narrator’s] life” (page 48)?


At the end of "On the Rainy River," the narrator makes a kind of confession: "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (61). What does this mean?


Here is the website for The Big Read with lots of interesting information and a 28 minute radio interview with Tim O'Brien:
www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/radioshow.php