English Notes
January 8, 2016
Homework: Read “On the Rainy River” for Tuesday 1/12
“Spin”



Spin--give (a news story or other information) a particular interpretation, esp. a favorable one.
Romanticize things from your viewpoint/distort the truth in your favor
During wartime, spin happens to show a positive/negative view on war
Details from the chapter:
 Narrator remembers a boy with a plastic leg, asked for chocolate, hops away, Azar
commenting that someone must have run out of ammo to kill him
 Mitchell Sanders—lice covered and sent a note saying FREE to his draft board in Ohio
 Checkers, unlike war, has a clear winner/loser and rules
 Narrator is 43, a writer, in front of his typewriter he recalls the war
 He recalls Kiowa, Curt Lemon—“The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own
dimension, replaying itself over and over.”
 Narrator recalls Ted Lavender, high on tranquilizers calling the war “a nice mellow war
today”
 Recalls Poppa-san, old Vietnamese man—he knew the safe spots. For five days no one
got hurt.
 Some days at war were boring “boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet”
 43 and the narrator is still writing about war—“But the thing about remembering is that
you don’t forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the
interception of past and present.”
 Happy peace story—solder goes AWOL and falls in love with a nurse. However, the
solder finds, “All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.”
 Memories: Norman Bowker watching the stars, wanting his dad to write a letter saying
it’s ok if he doesn’t win metals (feels pressured to be a war hero), Kiowa teaching a rain
dance, Ted Lavender adopting an orphan puppy that Azar later killed, the ages of the
soldiers (19-20), the chopper (helicopter) leaving, throwing a grenade.
 “Stories are for joining the past to the future” (36).
 “…there is nothing to remember except the story” (36).
Here are some notes to help you with the reading for Tuesday. 
Courage? What is courage?
“On the Rainy River”
Narrator explains that this is a story he never told before. It “makes [him] squirm.”














“Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance and by being
frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in
preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down” (38).
O’Brien/Narrator—didn’t act on a daily basis with courage
telling the truth—being courageous is standing up to things, but here little
things can slip by while you wait for the moment to be courageous
Believed the war was wrong—questioned the purpose of it—“you don’t make war without
knowing why”
Narrator took a modest stand against the war
Remembers receiving the draft letter—feeling “too good” for the war, “too smart” and “too
compassionate”—“I was no soldier”—didn’t know a “rifle from a sling shot”
Narrator—educated, planning to go to graduate school
“Rage in my stomach”—then turned to numbness
Summer of 1968 he worked in a meat packing plant in Minnesota removing clots from the neck
of dead pigs and spraying them with a water gun—wore goggles and a rubber apron because of
the “blood shower”—the smell was always there
consider this job—killing, slaughter house, gutting, savage
Spent a lot of time alone—remembers the draft notice tucked away in the wallet
Narrator afraid of terror—being in the “wrong war” and “taking aim at another human being”
Narrator fears death, considers running to Canada but also feared ridicule and censure
“Cracked” one day on the pig line and felt a popping feeling—narrator walked out of the plant
and went home. He was “covered with blood and hog stink” and packed his suitcase. He then
examined things around his house, remembers the sunlight, then scribbles a note to his parents
and left.
Headed along the “Rainy River” that separates Minnesota from Canada
Left his car and showed up on the porch of the Tip Top Lodge. A man, Elroy Berdhal, took him
in. “…if nothing else, this story represents a small gesture of gratitude twenty years overdue”
(46).
Elroy offered a room and a fish dinner. Narrator and Elroy spent six days together. Sat reading,
playing Scrabble, listened to records. They were hours of silence but Elroy never asked why the
narrator was there—“My hunch though, was that he already knew” (47).













One night an owl circled over the forest. Elroy commented that he owl was Jesus. Elroy knew
that the narrator was in trouble but couldn’t talk about it.
Narrator—vomited, was sick, thought of taking a boat and paddling towards Canada—also
worried about getting caught by border patrol/police/draft board
Considers the dreams of a 21 year old—how being drafted would change that or make him an
exile
“I think, the man understood that words were insufficient. The problem had gone beyond
discussion. During that log summer I’d been over and over the various arguments all the pros
and cons, and it was no longer a question that could be decided by an act of pure reason.
Intellect had come up against emotion” (49).
Elroy and the narrator discuss the price for lodging and meals. Elroy also considers wages for
the narrator’s help—says he owes him $200. This opens up the narrator to discuss his time
working at the slaughterhouse with the pigs. Although the narrator didn’t want to take the
money, Elroy tacked it to his door in an envelope that said “Emergency Fund”—“The man
knew” (51).
Last day/6th day they went fishing on the Rainy River. “I’ll never be certain, of course, but I
think he meant to bring me up against the realities, to guide me across the river and to take
me to the edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I chose a life for myself” (53).
What would you do?—Jump? Consider all you left behind? Cry? Narrator realizes that Canada
had “become a pitiful fantasy” (55).
Bravery/Courage—would be going to Canada.
“My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me, everything I had ever
been or ever wanted to be. I couldn’t get my breath; I couldn’t stay afloat; I couldn’t tell
which way to swim” (55).
Narrator imagines everyone from his life—his childhood self, playing cowboys, dressed for
prom—people from his future (future children, wife, man he kills with the grenade)
Narrator tells Elroy he will be leaving—it was as if Elroy already knew
Narrator packs up his truck, waited for Elroy, but he never showed. He leaves the $200 on the
kitchen counter, cleans up the dishes, but never sees Elroy to say good bye.
“I was a coward. I went to war” (58).