Lesson Two - On the Rainy River

Introduction

Lesson Two - On the Rainy River
Duration - 4 blocks (4 x 80 min + homework)

"All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth . . . " - Tim O'Brien, in "On the Rainy River"

While pursuing an ideal, an individual may be confronted with truths that must be recognized, truths which may illustrate the limitations of a single-minded passion. In that scenario, consider "the nature of motivations that would direct an individual's course of action."

Imagine that the Canadian government has instituted a draft for a war in a foreign country. You arrive home one day and find YOUR draft notice in the mail. What would you do? Would you be prepared to fight - and, possibly, die - far from home?

Resources

Documents
"On the Rainy River"
"On the Rainy River" analyses
essay skeleton

Websites
Vietnam War (summary)
Vietnam War (Wikipedia)

Tim O'Brien's web site
Tim O'Brien's Keynote Address from Writing Vietnam conference, April 1999

AUDIO

VIDEO

Lesson

Explore the links providing information regarding the Vietnam War. These websites will provide context for Tim O'Brien's story.

Peruse Tim O'Brien's website. You may be interested in reading or listening to his speech from April 1999 where he spoke about his time in Vietnam and his writing about the experience.

Read "On the Rainy River".
Consider the questions posed at the end of the story.

Read through the analyses document. Consider the interpretations others have offered regarding this short story. Do you agree with those interpretations?

Consider the NATURE of the motivations that ultimately directed Tim O'Brien's course of action at the end of his narrative.

Assignment 1

(20 marks)
Open a new Word document. Label it E301U2L2.1surname
In this document, complete the assignment outlined below.
Submit this assignment using the Dropbox for U2L2 Rainy River thesis.

Consider the unit question, "In his autobiographical short story, "On the Rainy River", what idea does author Tim O'Brien develop about the nature of motivations that direct an individual's course of action?"

You are not going to write an essay in response to the question, but an introductory paragraph for that essay ONLY, set up in the following manner:

• generalization - catch the reader's attention (at least 1 sentence) What can you say about the nature of our motivations? Will you define nature? Provide a quotation that speaks to the essence of motivations? How will you introduce this topic?
• title, genre, author - suggestion of organization and details (at least 3 sentences) "On the Rain River", short story, Tim O'Brien - the hint of organization will be the kinds of things you will discuss in our essay. What will you say about O'Brien to explore your thesis? If you are going to discuss the fear of death and the fear of shame, for example, those ideas will be part of this section.
• thesis statement (at least 1 sentence) Remember that a thesis must be "a general truth about life - with a narrowed focus". That means that your idea must work for you, for me, for your neighbour, for Tim O'Brien. The narrowed focus is to prevent you from writing "The nature of motivations is different for everyone." While that IS a general truth about life, there is no argument to it. How can you narrow that down and answer the question?

BEFORE crafting your thesis statement, use the thesis planner. (If you don't have Word on your computer, download the document and then upload it to your Google Drive. It will open in there!!)

1. Write out the TOPIC: "What idea does the text creator develop about the nature of motivations that direct an individual's course of action?"
2. LIST the Key Words: nature, motivations, direct, individual, course of action
3. DEFINE and REFINE (use a thesaurus) the keywords in the LEFT column.
4. CHOOSE evidence from "On the Rainy River" that corresponds with each keyword.  List that evidence in the RIGHT column.
5. Write your thesis statement.
6. Write the introductory paragraph for your essay.

Assignment 2

(100 marks)

Open the Word document essay skeleton. Save it as E301U2L2surname
In this document, complete the assignment outlined below.
Submit this assignment using the Dropbox Folder for U2L2 Rainy River skeleton.

Rather than writing a formal literary essay, you are going to create an essay skeleton by filling in the spaces in the essay skeleton chart. Notice that the THREE body paragraphs follow this format: (NEXT)

• New idea - provide a topic sentence for the paragraph that is related to your thesis statement
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Transition - provide a transition from this paragraph to the next

Each paragraph, then, will follow the "principle of thirds" - you create a statement, and then provide three pieces of evidence to support it, evidence for which you provide explanations.

Use your thesis statement from the paragraph you wrote in Assignment One to begin your Essay Skeleton. You are answering the question, "In his autobiographical short story, "On the Rainy River", what idea does author Tim O'Brien develop about the nature of motivations that direct an individual's course of action?"

Click for an example of an essay skeleton for the Macbeth essay in the Exemplars document.

Conclusion

"What I was crying about, you see, was - was not self-pity. I was crying with the knowledge that I'd be going to Vietnam, that I was essentially a coward, that I couldn't do the right thing, I couldn't go to Canada. Given what I believed, anyway, the right thing would have been to follow your conscience, and I couldn't do it. Why, to this day, I'm not sure, I can speculate it. Some of it had to do with raw embarrassment, a fear of blushing, a fear of some old farmer in my town saying to another farmer, 'Did you hear what the O'Brien kid did? The sissy went to Canada.' And imagining my mom and dad sitting in the next booth over, overhearing this, you know, and imagining their eyes colliding and bouncing away, and-uh, I was afraid of embarrassment. Men died in Vietnam, by the way, out of the same fear - you know, not out of nobility or patriotism; they were just af - they charged bunkers and machine gun nests, just because they would be embarrassed not to, later on, in front of their buddies. Not a noble motive for human behavior, but I tell you one thing, one you'd better think about in your lives, that sometimes doing the hard thing is also doing the embarrassing thing, and when that moment strikes, it hits you hard." Tim O'Brien