Exploration 3 by Braeden Mills

My active reading is going well. I actually enjoy the book so much. Something that I've noted was how in the how to tell a war story, we see him describe a war story as an "absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." This, to me, changes on the last page of the chapter where he says, "And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

At this point in the book, the story that has meant the most to me was 'On the rainy river.' I can put myself into his shoes, and I am still thinking about what I would've done that day when he was on the boat with Elroy. "I remember staring at the old man then at my hands, then at Canada. The shoreline was dense with brush and timber. I could see tiny red berries on the bushes. I could see a squirrel up in one of the birch trees, a big crow looking at me from a boulder along the river. That close - twenty yards = and I could see the delicate latticework of the leaves , the texture of the soil, the browned needles beneath the pines, the configurations of geology and human history. Twenty yards. I could've done it. I could've jumped and started swimming for my life" (O'Brien 54).

The character that stands out to me so far is Elroy. He's such a big influence on O'Brien's choice to stay. He doesn't directly influence him, but he indirectly does it. He gives him time to think, be alone, and be away from everything. I liked the way he went about things without asking what was wrong.