Themes in In The Lake Of The Woods Essay

The novel In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim OBrien, is a very confusing book that touches many different topics, some of which are tough to read about and discuss. This book has many different themes throughout. In the Lake of the Woods is a uniquely written book as it reveals the story bit by bit and doesnt go in chronological order. It also does not ever officially give you a traditional ending. The reader if left to themselves to decide if the main character, John Wade, is innocent or guilty of killing his wife. Tim OBrien does not just tell you what the main lesson or theme of the book is. He gives you the facts of the story and the history of the main characters and leaves you to figure it out. There is an almost infinite amount of different options for the reader to decide on what is the main theme of the story is. While there are many different ways to view what this book is truly about. One of the big themes of this story is the horrors of war and how soldiers are changed forever from what they experience. The war doesnt end for the soldiers when they come home; they relive it every day for the rest of their lives. John Wade is a perfect example of a man reliving his horrible war experiences.

John Wade seemed to be two different men. One was the loving, caring charmer who could get anybody to like him and made a great politician. The other was his dark side. His dark side started when he received his nickname, sorcerer. He was given this name by his company in Vietnam because of the magic tricks that he would do for the entertainment of his friends and fellow soldiers. While his fellow fighters just meant and thought of it as a simple nickname as stated in the evidence chapter 6. We called him Sorcerer; it was a nickname-Richard Thinbill (25). While they thought of it was a nickname, Wade came to believe in the nickname as his actual persona. He felt he was magic and could do anything and not die or get hurt. He thought he could actually make things disappear. This goes to show what lengths some soldiers went to too keep their sanity in the midst of all the chaos of war. John was way out of his element in Vietnam and OBrien shows the reader this by letting us watch Johns descent into madness. There is one episode in particular that started to turn John into almost two different people and shows us, the readers, and the true horrors of war.

In the midst of his tour of duty in Vietnam, John Wade was involved in one of the most famous and gruesome incidents of the whole war, which ended with him killing one of his fellow soldiers. The My Lai massacre was one of the darkest moments in the history of the U.Ss involvement in the war in Vietnam and Tim OBrien decides to put John Wade right in the middle of it. He and his company,

Charlie company, land in the village and everybody else proceeds to kill everybody and everything that moves or breathes. How Wade responds show just how good and crazy he already is. He starts to have visions and to feel that he is gliding at random intervals around the village. John is trying to escape his surroundings and his subconscious is making him forget some things about the day and the mission. The climax of the events for John Wade is the killing of his fellow soldier PFC. Weatherby. Wade fell into a drainage ditch full of human bodies and looks up to see Weatherby standing over him, smiling down at him. John then shoots him, then lies to the rest of the company and tells them that the Vietcong killed their fellow soldier. Later, he found himself at the bottom of an irrigation ditch. There were many bodies present, maybe a hundred. He was caught up in the slime. PFC Weatherby found him there. Hey, Sorcerer, Weatherby said. The guy started to smile, but Sorcerer shot him anyway. (110) Wade is referred to as sorcerer to show what state of mind he was in. Wade felt that he could make this whole episode disappear, as he was the Sorcerer, but it would come back to haunt him for a long time after the war was over and he was home.

Back home is almost as bad as Vietnam for John Wade. OBrien shows us that Wade struggled to get back into the real world after the struggles and death and destruction of Vietnam. He continued to have flash backs to the war and kept keeping secrets from everybody when he didnt need too. He continued to think of himself as the all-powerful sorcerer, who could just disappear into the night without a trace. While he was struggling with his past and present, his future was crumbling all around him and he did not even notice. He convinced himself that his marriage was fine and that he could keep Kathy under his control forever. John seemed to know nothing about his wife and would not share anything about him with her. She hated the whole deal of politics and going from city to city and acting fake, but he did not seem to notice. Tell him she was glad it was over. A relief, shed say. No more elections. All that was finished and now she could confess to how much shed always hated it. The polls and the cameras and the crowds. Real hate, shed say.(113). This proves just how much Kathy has drifted away from John without him noticing. This rift between them can be traced all the way back to the letters they wrote back and forth while John was fighting in Vietnam. They did not seem to be on the same page about how their relationship was going, with John comparing them to snakes who ate each other. He seemed to think that he impressed her, but it just served to push them farther apart in her mind. When John got back, he seemed to notice that something was wrong with Kathy. It turns out that she was cheating on him with a dentist. Even with that, they stayed together, with John trying to regain his control over his wife. The whole issue of John trying to control Kathy was the main reason that their friends who knew what was happening and what happened between them, thought that Kathy left John for good.

In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim OBrien, is a book about many different issues and struggles faced by all soldiers returning from war and trying to fit into society again. John Wade tried to make something of himself, but his past shooting of a fellow soldier and his participation in the My Lai Massacre, came back to ruin him in his run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. He also suffered from flashbacks to his war years and from what seems to be undiagnosed multiple personality disorder. His other persona was his nickname in Vietnam, Sorcerer. This book is a discussion of how soldiers relieve their experiences in war every day of their lives and how they can influence all aspects of their lives, from jobs to relationships.