On the Rainy River Flashcards
Verisimilitude
True to reality
- feels real
- biographical context
- art is a lie. (that brings us to the truth)
first page the book is dedicated to fictional characters
Composite novel
Collection of short stories
- narratives are specifically composed and arranged
- goal of creating an enhanced or different experience when reading the group as a whole as opposed to its individual parts.
quote + meaning => COWARD
“I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.”
He went to war because of the fear of being mocked and gossiped about.
(Coward) he feels although he has surrendered to joining the war. And was too worried about what other people would think of him.
Opnion on the war
- Thought he was too good for war
- it was a waste of time, he just graduated
quote + meaning => RIVER
“My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me”
Hallucination to describe how O’Brien is feeling at that specific moment.
Metaphor to describe how he felt, when he looked back into the Minnesota river.
At this point, he was imagining looking back into his history and his old life.
He is feeling overwhelmed and uses a hallucination as an excuse for this feeling.
IDEA => Bobber
Describes himself as “bobbing”
- fishing
- river is his conflict with society
- oscillating between courage and cowardace
- goes where the river takes him
Setting
Pre-war minnesota
narrated by obrein
HE GOES NORTHWEST => rainy river
