Elroy Berdahl

 Elroy Berdahl is the proprietor of the Tip Top Lodge on the Rainy River near the Canadian border. He has the opportunity to influence something, manage something at its discretion actively. The difference in his authority and open mind in the team. Berdahl serves as the closest thing to a father figure for O’Brien, who, after receiving his draft notice, spends six contemplative days with the quiet, kind Berdahl while he decides whether to go to war or to escape the draft by running across the border to Canada.

Elroy Berdahl: eighty-one years old, skinny and shrunken and mostly bald. He wore a flannel shirt and brown work pants. In one hand, he carried a green apple, a small paring knife in the other. His eyes had the bluish gray color of a razor blade, the same polished shine, and as he peered up at O'Brien feeling a strange sharpness, almost painful, a cutting sensation as if his gaze were somehow slicing him open. In part, no doubt, it was his own sense of guilt, but even so, he is certain that the old man took one look and went right to the heart of things—a kid in trouble.

His room was full of books, and he carried them with him to the war as well. For Elroy, the book may be bad, maybe good, can be polygraphic quality or not, but it will still please him. When he takes a book in his hands, he always expects something incredible. Books are his loyal advisers; they teach him to think, what is unknown. Therefore, the role of the book in his life is very high: he is obliged to book his literacy and education. That’s why he is honest, hardworking, loves his country, respects people.