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Personal Response on the 'On the Rainy River'

Better Essays

ELA 30 – 1: Personal Essay
October 16, 2012
Gaddiel O. Matira

Is it fair to hold individuals responsible for a choice society pressured them to make?

Canada might have been one of the best places in the world but for me and Tim, Canada is a lot more than that. For Tim O’ Brien’s “On the Rainy River”, Canada is freedom: freedom from the draft letter that pressures him to go to war, freedom from the war that he never understood and always hated, freedom from the dirt, tent, and mosquitoes, freedom from that dense greasy pig-stink and blood clots in the slaughterhouse, freedom from his country, and freedom from his conscience… or is it? On the other hand, for me, Canada is separation: separation from the friends and family who I most …show more content…

The same society that built the morals and beliefs and principles he has in him had then become the same society that crippled him to make the choice of leaving all those behind as he stated, “And what was so sad, I realized, was that Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. (55)”
In the stories Tim O’ Brien and I shared, there is this one little detail in common, we both made a choice. At first, the decision of moving to Canada felt like a selfish decision I was “forced” to make only for the family’s sake. Actually, I even held them responsible for my misery for a couple of weeks. But as those weeks and months pass by, I came to realize that such choice was actually one of the greatest things that can happen to me, for it was more than just an opportunity for our family to be whole but a breakthrough to endless possibilities towards reaching my dreams. However, for Tim, without any further details after he went to the war, we are

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