In On the Rainy River we encounter this idea of bravery and what it means in various contexts. According to www.dictionary.com the word brave means “having or displaying courage, resolution, or daring; not cowardly or timid.” In the summer of 1968, for Tim O’Brien, it meant standing up for something that went against the patriotic views and support of a nation at war. It meant fleeing his country to avoid being drafted to fight in what he believed to be “a wrong war.”
In this story we encounter an opposition to the “every day ideas” of what it means to be brave. Traditionally speaking, brave people step in front of a moving vehicle to save someone else’s life; they fight fires and rescue people trapped inside the burning infernos. People with courage stand up for what they believe in: religion, abortion, equality among races and genders; they sacrifice their lives in the name of freedom for their nation and its people. O’Brien challenges this idea as he endures the moral struggle of being drafted for a war he does not believe in. “There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would’ve willingly marched off to the battle. The problem, though, was that a draft board did not let you choose your war.”
As the summer progressed O’Brien struggled with the possibility of escaping to Canada. “Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop.” “Run, I’d think. Then I’d think, Impossible. Then a second later I’d think, Run.” For O’Brien the brave thing to do was to stand up against the war and walk away from his draft notice, refusing to fight in Vietnam. That act of bravery came with its very own excruciating consequences. It meant he would leave his family, friends and everything he had ever known in his entire life behind and go off into a new country all on his own without the ability to return home.
This developed into a fear of exile. He thought of his parents, his school teachers, friends and people at the old Gobbler Café; all of them he knew would think, “How the damned sissy had taken off for Canada.” He wanted to challenge them all; he wanted to tell them “How much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a way they didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.”
As the story goes, on page 55, while sitting on a boat just yards away from Canada, O’Brien concluded, “Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave.” Later, after a dramatic hallucination of all the people that be believed would call him a coward if he actually did cross the border into Canada he realized “…I couldn’t make myself be brave. It had nothing to with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was.” “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to.” Even though he did succumb to the mainstream belief in what he should do he refused to abandon his idea that it required more bravery to run than to fight.
I chose the song Cowboy by Kid Rock for this idea of bravery and what it means to Tim O’Brien. Movies depict cowboys as fighting for what they believe in; fighting for survival on their farms and on what we passively call the “great frontier.”Being a cowboy also comes with the connotation of being somewhat of a rebel and in the 1960’s dodging the draft would have been considered a rather rebellious act. Although the lyrics of the song do not specifically fit the idea of bravery in the context of this novel, I do believe the idea of wanting to be a “cowboy” is something most American boys grow up believing is brave. I also believe the harshness of the music with these lyrics reflects the tension O’Brien’s mind and body would have experienced as he decided whether or not to be brave and flee to Canada. 
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