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Strength in Individuality
Lindsey Purves
March 5, 2012
Mr. Kabachia Humanities 30
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Many humans would agree with the idea that we are stronger as a whole, connected
and working together toward a common goal. In Tim O’Brien’s On the Rainy River, we learn
the story of O’Brien’s struggle against conforming to fight in the Vietnam War. I believe
humans only choose to conform for one of two reasons: we believe it is what we have
to/should do or because we believe it will somehow aid in the pursuit of our own desires.
It has been proven through history that when humans join together, conforming for
a single purpose, we can achieve very great or very devastating things. Hitler used the idea
that we are powerful as a group to convince Germans to conform to Nazism in order to
bring Germany back to the top of the world after the First World War. Hitler convinced
many thousands of people to conform to his ideals, resulting in the deaths of many people
and for those who were unable to resist conforming: the disgrace of being a German for
many years to come.
Tim O’Brien recognized the need to conform and join in a war to battle groups such
as the Nazis, but did not wish to blindly follow his country into a war no one knew the
reason behind. Instead he wished to pursue the life he wanted to live out, not fight and
possibly die on the battlefield far away from where he desired to be. “I survived, but it’s not
a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.” (On the Rainy River by Tim O’Brien)
O’Brien believed his weakness was not being able to resist the conformity and does not see
himself as brave for going to war, instead a coward.
During the Nazis’ control of Germany many Germans went along with Nazism
because they thought that’s what they should do as “strong German citizens” or because
they were just too afraid of the consequences of going against conformity. Hitler’s right-
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hand men conformed to these ideals in order to reap the rewards they would gain for
themselves. During times of war, soldiers will go into battle for either the “glory” of fighting
for their country or because it is what they “should do as good citizens.”
Conformity makes humans strong as whole, but the true strong ones are those who
pursue what they wish to attain for themselves.Hitler was a very powerful man because he
rallied nearly an entire country to aid him in the pursuit of his own personal desires. It
takes a much greater courage to step out from the whole and stand alone than to fade into
the background and let yourself be carried along by the waves of conformity.
