ike chopping wood and didn't talk to him about sensitive topics like why he was there. One of the most captivating moments of the story is when Berdhal takes O'Brien fishing on the Rainy River, which is actually the divider between his two lives. Berdhal takes the boat within meters of the Canadian shore, brining O'Brien to attempt to answer the question, swim to freedom or return home and fight. He thinks that he actually has a choice in this matter, but there really is now way that he could have jumped even with all the motivation in the world. His mind isn't mentally prepared to make such a decision. He then knew, so close to freedom that "Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility"(59). So he went home the next day, eventually heading off to Vietnam, not even getting to say good bye to the man who in the next 20 years would grow to become the most influential man in his past. Embarrassment is O'Brien's downfall. He would imagine all of the citizens in his hometown gossiping about his lack of patriotism and he couldn't even imagine telling his parents that he dodged the draft. His life of following the will of others led him to have overwhelming feelings of embarrassment that blurred his ability to see what he should have done. The most powerful line in the entire story is the last, which reads "I was a coward, I went to war"(63). He knew that he was a coward for not fleeing to Canada and doing what was right because the fog of moral confusion was lifted of him. By fighting in the Vietnam war, he could clearly see what he could not when he was 21; that following his heart was what he should have done....
