In Tim O’Brien’s “On the Rainy River”, Tim’s use of imagery affects the tone of his story. The tone doesn’t just explain how Tim feels, imagery helps show the tone of the story, and with the effects of the choice of words Tim uses throughout the story. Tim describes the pig factory and the shore in the story, these are some examples of imagery in this story. The descriptions of these scenes are important for showing Tim’s tone in these scenarios.

Firstly, the imagery of the pig factory shows the tone, by the use of descriptive word choice. The pig factory is important for describing Tim’s tone, he says “The plant specialized in pork products, and for eight hours a day I stood on a quarter-mile assembly line—more properly, a disassembly …show more content…
Tim is describing the scene around him when he is focused with a difficult decision, he states “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.” This tells the reader that he is thinking really hard, and that he is really focusing on this decision. Because he is really focused, readers can tell that Tim is concentrating hard. Furthermore, Tim his frustrated because of this decision, he describes the pain in his chest and he said he could only cry. The tone in this is cowardice because he made the choice to go to war, and the war is something he disagreed with. The reason why this shows he is a coward, he was crying and had that pain because he made up his mind. Tim chooses to fight, even though he didn’t want to, and now he feels like a coward because this is something he doesn’t believe in.

To conclude, Tim uses imagery to build and support the tone in the story. The tone and imagery, goes hand and hand because they both show what is going on in the story, and shows how Tim feels. The pig factory, shows Tim’s disgust and it shows how horrific the scene is. The shore, helps readers feel how hard that decision is, and how he is focusing on every detail because of how hard he is concentrating. The descriptive use of words builds