The chapter On the Rainy River reveals the war and brings out the decision to fight or to run. Jimmy Cross also brings up that he uses his embarrasment as motivation to keep going. O’Brien feels guilty for going to Vietnam against his moral values. He stated that he had been against the war and he even protested it in newspaper articles that he wrote. this tug of war withO'Brian allows the reader to feel the cause and effect of such emotional pull on citizens given the call of duty during the Vietnam War. O’Brien shows the reader the confusion and anger experienced by the soldier when the demands of his country and the demands of his conscience collided.
With O’Brien’s final decision being to go to war, it may seem as though the guilt of committing atrocities against another person had more guilt than that of the draft. However, O’Brien described how pressure from the uninformed community was the ultimate factor in his decision to go to war. His last three sentences are another sign of the extreme difficulty in going against his moral values due to the overpowering peer pressure of the entire nation: “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.”
The entire fourth chapter showed the catch-22 situation experienced by all soldiers drafted to the Vietnam War. The only way to escape the guilt was to take a stand that will cause guilt. Going against your country to not be in the draft will bring the disapproval of your community causing guilt and shame. In order to avoid that guilt and shame, you must fight in the war despite your previous objection to the United States involvement in it. This causes personal confusion for being in an act you feel is morally incorrect. One Last thing is the old man at the Tip Top Lodge and if he is real or not. Is he just a made up character or will he appear again?
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