O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Choices are hard to make in life and well said by Graham Brown is that “Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we choose to be” Each time we make choice our life we usually get in dilemmas between choosing our comfort versus choose what other people want you to do. Similarly, on the Rainy River short story the main character O’Brien also had this conflict when he received his draft about going to the war. There are and will be time in each individual life when we have to choose something that we don’t like or totally against it. Similarly, O'Brien was always against the war which made no sense to him so he tried to escape to Canada and flee from being drafted to war, its proven when he said “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything…just take off and run like hell and never stop”. This situation was the more of a moral dilemma between going to war and fight for his country pride by taking up the role and defeat all his principles and beliefs or another choice is to stand up for himself and his principles by not going to the war. In the end, O'Brien went to fight the battle and abandoned his personal beliefs and principles. O'Brien tries to justify and clarify his choice to accept and fight, but what he didn’t know was …show more content…

This story "On the Rainy River" gives a lesson about following your heart and make best decisions based on what you feel because that decision will affect you in future too. O'Brien proved this lesson by telling us choosing the wrong choice was one of the biggest mistakes and it resulted in a lifetime of regret and depression due to the fact that his morals and principles were completely disregarded with his decision of going to the

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