Family is one of the most important social aspects for a human: it provides a place to practice one’s social skills safely, or allows for a number of strong connections to be made with other people. But murdering a member of the family breaks up that group and leaves everyone worse off. Tim O’Brien’s novel In the Lake of the Woods is about John Wade, a
One of the most important aspects about John Wade's character is the wondrous ability he has to disengage his memory of traumatizing events and losses from his mind. Among those events, John Wade specifically removes the horrid memories of the past murders he has committed, as well as the loss of loved ones. One such person was PFC Weatherby, an American soldier in the Vietnam War whom John "loved like a brother," (68) yet killed anyways. The chaos and mayhem created during the My Lai Massacre shook John so vehemently that he was able to shoot his own comrade. Rather than dealing with the fact that he murdered a fellow soldier, he "pretended he wasn't responsible; he pretended he couldn't have done it and therefore hadn't; he pretended it didn't matter much; he pretended that if the secret stayed inside him, with all the other secrets, he could fool the world and himself too." (68) This incident is a prime example of John being able to manipulate both his own memory and the truth of events using his incredible power of wiping away facts, replacing them with fallacies that both defend himself as a murderer and wipe away his moral guilt. While he may alter his memories to destroy his shame, John's subconscious constantly tries to replace that love: "Sometimes he did bad things just to be loved. Sometimes he hated himself for needing love so badly." (60) So while John manipulates the memories of his past murders, he also feels the incredible guilt of not being able to replace the love of a lost one.
John Wade also has a significant inability to control his destructive and impulsive actions. Throughout the novel, John displays this by constantly saying "Kill Jesus" or feeling as though "his hands had no meaningful connections to his wrists.” (50) All of these instances contribute to the idea that John loses both himself and personal control on numerous occasions. Beyond losing control of himself, John also becomes controlled by "a force so violent it seemed to pick him up by the shoulders. It was rage, in part, but it was also illness and sorrow and evil, all kinds of things" (40). This force determines the John’s actions because he cannot help but feel controlled by it as well as obedient to its seditious calling. The lure of this alternate personality of his is ultimately portrayed when John accepts its calling by "[boiling] a small spider plant," yet accepting that "it wasn't rage. It was necessity." (50) John's alternate personality also has the power to destroy any account or memory of his actions in that state. One night in the cabin, John remembers "pulling a blanket to [Kathy's] chin and then returning to the living room, where for a long while he lost track of his whereabouts." (51) At this point in the night before Kathy's disappearance, John's alternate personality takes control, leaving his memory behind, and forgoing any recollection he could have of his actions. The loss of memory, in conjunction with an enormous force taking control of him, clearly shows that John is able to perform actions which are both violent as well as untraceable in his attempts to recollect his past events.
The last part of John's character is his ability to manipulate not only himself, his memories, and even his moral guilt, but to also control the very people and environment around him. The most obvious form of John's control is his constant habit of stalking Kathy before they get married. Despite the fact that John is aware that she is cheating on him, he reminisces about how "nothing could ever be sure" and that there is “always the threat of tomorrow’s treachery, or next year’s treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that." (43) What this distinctly implies in John's reasoning to control Kathy is his obvious mistrust of both her as well as the environment she exists in. Beyond the watching over the environment of his beloved wife, John also controls his own environment. The single object that is dedicated to this task throughout the novel is his all powerful mirror. Through this sheet of reflection John can “slide away behind the glass,” “turn bad things into good things” and constantly fantasize that “the mirror made things better.” (66) When this finally transforms into John having “those mirrors in his head" (49) he has taken complete control of his environment, to convince himself that his actions are not of any consequence or shame.
Just because John has the ability to kill as well as the technique for manipulating his memories does not necessarily entail that he did so. Unfortunately, there are only two options for Kathy’s disappearance: either he killed her or she ran. But, Kathy both loved and feared John too much to run from him. Soon after marrying John, she whispers to him “It’s scary how much I love you.” (45) Not only does Kathy love John as much as any newly wedded couple should, but she uses fear as a degree to which she loves John. She knows the great power John is capable of—taking some drastic action and convincing himself and the world that it happened in a way that lets John walk away guiltless. More than that, she acknowledges that his dad died when he was young, creating a great amount of sorrow and fear of abandonment. To assuage John’s timidity, she convinces him that she is with him and is “not going anywhere.” (32) While John fears Kathy will disappear, Kathy rightly fears John making her disappear. Kathy’s sister, Patricia, describes Kathy as seeming “almost scared of him sometimes” (26) in her testimonial to the police. According to the recent New York Times article “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles” (1/13/2008), almost one-third of all victims of soldiers returning from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder “were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives.” In Recovering from the War, Patricia H.C. Mason describes married veterans “waking up with [their] hands around [their] wives throat.” (146) The chances of John killing Kathy rather than Kathy running appears to be very high from just a statistical point of view.
John has been proven capable to performing actions and then not having any recollection of doing said action. It is also unlikely that Kathy ran due to her fearful love for John (or loving fear?). So what happened? Here are the relevant facts:
· The night Kathy disappeared, John woke up in the middle of the night, boiled water in an iron teakettle, and poured the boiling water over a number of house plants. (49-50) After killing the plants, his hands lost any “meaningful connection to his wrists,” (50) which he previously mentioned after taking revenge upon a Vietnamese soldier by shooting off the soldier’s face (40). He watched Kathy sleep, noticing “the scent of wet wool” (57) in the air. At this point, he does not remember exactly what happened the rest of the night, only that at one point he was waist deep in the lake, then fully submerged in the icy water, and finally resting on the dock, “alone.” (51-52)
· The narrator describes how Kathy might have fled: she dragged the boat from the boathouse to the shore, pushed the boat out into the lake until she was into “thigh-deep water” (171), at which point she jumped in the boat. She started the Evinrude motor and leaves the land behind.
· The night after Kathy disappeared, John set out cleaning the house, including disposing of the dead houseplants, as well as the iron teakettle John had used that night. (78, 180)
· The next day, after noticing that Kathy was gone, John headed for the boathouse. When he arrived and opened the ajar doors (which are normally closed entirely), he was not surprised that “the boat was gone.” (83)
· During John’s interrogation, Art Lux, the
· While talking to Claude, John’s friend, “that fuzzy, seasick feeling had settled back over him.” (92)
· Once Patricia arrives to the town, John returns again to the boathouse, where “a sense of pre-memory washed over him. Things had happened here.” (188)
After analyzing these facts, a coherent story forms: the night Kathy disappeared, John woke up, boiled the water, the houseplants and Kathy, killing her. He took her body to the boathouse, where he opened the door, dragging the boat—with the Evinrude motor—to the shore. He pushed the door closed but it didn’t close all the way. He placed Kathy’s body in the boat, and waded out into the water so he could push the boat off. Once the boat was far enough in the water, John jumped in, started the motor (he wasn’t asleep and so wasn’t woken up by it turning over), and set a course of the middle of the lake. Unfortunately, the lake was choppy, making John seasick. When he tried to throw the corpse over the side of the boat, his seasickness caused him to fall in the water as well. Now, he’s submerged into the water, and the boat has been overturned. John swam back to the shore, where he rested, alone, on the dock. John gets to work erasing the blackboard of his mind, erasing the bad stuff, “drawing pretty new pictures.” (133)
John, with these incredible characteristics and abilities, proves himself throughout the entirety of the book that he is guilty for the disappearance of Kathy. With the constant horrors of Vietnam coming back to him through his failed election, his ability to manipulate his memories, his awareness of no self control, and the power he has to create an unbelievably complex and innocent illusion both to himself and the people around him, proves that he is the ultimate wizard. John Wade even if it may have been through the power of his enormous subconscious, finally performs his ultimate wish. With the complete disappearance of Kathy, John fulfills his childhood wish of performing the ultimate vanishing act.
