Comparison Between 'Emergency And Reve Haitien'

Tarra Kooker

Essay Three

While making decisions in life, it’s hard to know whether you’re making the right choices. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about what is right and what is wrong. Throughout the stories “Reve Haitien” by Ben Fountain, “Emergency” by Denis Johnson, and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien I had many differentiating opinions. In “Reve Haitien” I’d argue Mason made the right choice, while in “Emergency” and “On the Rainy River” both our narrators made misguided or wrong decisions.

In contrast to the other two short fictions, “Reve Haitien’s” main character ultimately made the appropriate choice with comparison to his morals and beliefs. Throughout the story the audience is driven to believe that Mason is “not

like” the other observers, but instead more compassionate. He chooses to live in a destitute part of town and played chess with local children daily. “He lived in Pacot, the scruffy middle-class neighborhood. While most of his fellow O.A.S observers had taken houses in the fashionable suburb” (Fountain 307). Mason has direct benevolence towards other individuals throughout the story that the characters from “Emergency” and “On the Rainy River” lacked. “Kids would be watching him play that day’s challenger. Mason rarely won; that was the whole point” (Fountain 308). Although Mason’s actions of smuggling stolen paintings to a reseller across the boarder is immensely illegal, I found this deal to be utterly akin to Mason’s true personality. While some people may perceive Mason’s action as unsound and illegal, I found it to show his real self and identity as a character. If he would’ve refused help, that is what would’ve have been shocking.

Comparing “Emergency” and “On the Rainy River”, with contrast to “Reve Haitien”, these two main characters chose less righteous paths.

In “Emergency” the readers witness the narrators and Georgie’s careless behaviors and antics, while working at the hospital. As it is clear they are not malicious characters, and at times don’t have the slightest clue about their surrounding, but their dispositions and actions are erroneous. From the narrator and Georgie’s stealing and taking drugs on the job, pulling a knife out of a man’s head, and slicing open a rabbit on the side of the road all dictate erratic and unstable decision making. “In a minute he was standing at the edge of the fields, cutting the scrawny little thing up, tossing away its organs. ‘It’s a rabbit with babies inside it!” (Emergency 389). While Georgie and the Narrator were not purposely trying to cause harm and everything ended sufficiently, things quickly could have resulted unpleasantly. Due to the circumstances of the characters’ reckless behaviors, I looked at “Emergency” with more of a deontology perspective. Judging the actions, they were doing at hand as unmoral, rather than justifying it because of a positive outcome like a utilitarian would. With “On the Rainy River”, I classify this narrator’s decision as wrong due to it going against his most primitive character. “I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame” (O’Brien 629). “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (O’Brien 646). He shares these enclosed perceptions of war and his hatred and shame for it, therefore being the reason for his decision to enlist as wrong. Regardless of how important fighting in the war meant to those around him, the narrator should have followed his eminently robust ethics and been defiant to his family, and the system, to stay true to

himself.

All the fiction’s compare to one another in the sense that every main character had a choice to make, or multiple choices. Yet, each story is unique in what makes their decisions made right or wrong. With “Reve Haitien” and “On the Rainy River” they require looking at the internal morals of the character to make a clearer judgment combined with the audiences own opinions. While “Emergency” was more along the lines of personal opinion. My ethics and morality lead me to the belief that “On the Rainy River” and “Emergency” compare to one another in having awry decisions; and “Reve Haitien” being the short story with suitable choices and outcome.