I would want to start off by talking about the author's
impression of the war from which he was fleeing. Although he was, by his own account,
politically naive, at the same time, he had severe questions about the justness of the
Vietnam war:
Certain blood was being shed for uncertain
reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or
law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A War of national
liberation or simple
aggression?
Such questioning
shows the basis for the narrator's decision to try and jump being drafted by fleeing to
Canada like so many others.
Then I would refer to the
reason why the speaker does not actually cross the border as he planned to do. When he
finally has the opportunity to leave the US, he does not take this opportunity, for the
following reasons:
I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace,
or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I
couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's
all it was.
Note how this
leads into the final paragraph of the story, which presents us with something of a
paradox:
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.
Such quotes are
improtant because they show how Tim O'Brien went to war because of the fear of being
mocked and disparaged if he chose not to go. However, the end of the story challenges
our assumptions by the author calling himself a "coward" because he actually went to the
war. Putting these three quotes together, we can see that Tim O'Brien actually
considered himself a "coward" because he did not act on his beliefs and allowed himself
to be shamed into participating in a war that he was deeply uncertain
about.
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