Cowardice

Tim O’Brien’s dominant characteristic in the short story “On the Rainy River” is cowardice. Many people might think that because he went to the Vietnamese war and fought in one of the most brutal and destructive wars that he must be courageous but this is not true. O’Brien did not have the courage to stand up for his ideas and values. Rather than do what he thought was right by dodging the draft, Tim proceeded to do what he thought everyone else wanted him to do and he joined the military to fight in Vietnam. “I was a coward. I went to the war.” Tim admits at the end of his short story. Tim O’Brien is a coward because he is more worried about what other people think of him than his own opinion.
Some might argue that a more dominant trait than the cowardice of Tim O’Brien would be his feelings of self-loathing. Tim’s self-loathing was brought on by the fact that he was incapable of doing what he wanted. Although his self-loathing is a relatively big part of his character, it can easily be linked to Tim being a coward. An instance of his cowardice through self-hatred is when Tim is in the boat with Elroy on the Rainy River. He starts to hallucinate and sees thousands of people from his past, present, and future. He judges himself through their eyes and bases his decision of whether or not he will run to Canada on what he believes all these people will think of him. Tim acts like it is these people who hate him but it is all in his head and so his thoughts of hatred are coming from himself. Tim hates himself because he does not do what he wants but he does not do what he thinks is right because he is a coward.