Like always, respond to anything in the book that particularly interested you. Here are some ideas for things you might want to discuss:
- What do you think about the experimental structure of the book? Do you think it works well or does it seem “gimmicky” to you? Why do you think O’Brien might have chosen this odd form?
- Discuss a recurring pattern of images in the novel. You might look, for instance, at fog, mirrors, labyrinths, trapdoors, etc.
- Why do you think O’Brien includes the thematic strand that focuses on magic?
- What do you think is the point of the figure of the biographer/historian, who we’re first introduced to in footnote 21 (p. 30)?
- Why the inclusion in later evidence chapters of massacres at Sandy Creek and Little Big Horn as well as atrocities committed by British infantryman and American soldiers during the American Revolution?
- What do you think happened to Kathy Wade?
The thematic strand of magic is a convincing craft for me in this novel. At the core of magic lies the power of perspectives, a revisited theme in Tim O’Brien’s books. Magic also embodies manipulation, of choosing what to reveal and what to keep secret; what to remember and what to forget. When Pat called John “the chivalrous forgetter”, she came face to face with a deep part of his being, and she named it.
Among the artifacts that wove the reoccurring patterns of images, the mirror is what I find most intriguing. The phrase “mirror in his mind” came up repeatedly. For me it symbolizes John’s coping mechanism – I hesitate to say that it was the protagonist’s way of coping with trauma, because we were shown that he coped with his father’s emotional abuse in a similar way even when he was a small child. A mirror reflects the external image, and in that way it seems utterly honest. Yet a mirror is coated with silver in the back, making it impossible for light to penetrate. What’s behind a mirror remains invisible in the dark. The image of a mirror in John’s mind suggests that he bottled up the horror and trauma inside, and the external behavior was a mimicry, a performance. We saw this pattern of impersonation in both his career path and marriage.
The Hypothesis chapters reminded me of Going After Cacciato, all the vivid imaginations that a lucid mind spun in order to ease the pain and make peace with the unspeakable. I believe in reality Kathy Wade was burned and murdered by John, then sunk onto the bottom of the lake. Although I do find it hard to imagine a healthy adult burnt to death in her sleep by the boiling water poured from a tea kettle – the details didn’t quite add up, there had to be fighting and struggling and injuries and blood… At the beginning of the book, it was mentioned that John’s face was clawed by himself. I took that with a grain of salt.
I was also very interested to learn more about the war atrocities in Vietnam referenced in this story, resonated with the massacres at Sandy Creek and the atrocities committed in American Revolution. While the story itself is a work of fiction, the war crime in Vietnam was chosen to be the foundation that the story was built upon, and I find it hard not to be curious in the history.
I was surprised, and honestly delighted, by the odd structure of the novel. Perhaps it is the true crime junkie in me always looking for the chance to solve something, but the Evidence chapters went beyond gimmick as the “evidence” went beyond what the reader immediately expects. The moment that a passage from The Crying of Lot 49 was included I felt the change in the text. The constellation of quotes and testimonials explode out from simple murder myster to an exploration of atrocites, deceit, truth, trauma, responsibility, and more. The structure draws attention to the author who makes themself known in the footnotes but rescinds into the background. The author provides possible outcomes for Kathy Wade, though the one of Kathy running away free requires several chapters and is not nearly as compelling as the much more violent outcome which only needed one quick chapter. These hypotheses provide deep insight on the author’s constructed Kathy which might convince the reader they know her at all. By braiding the imagined possibilities with the narrativized known past and the myriad of testimonies, the novel breaks apart its premise. The story pulls off its own magic trick through its deceit. Like a Magic Eye image there is a surface image that appears hazy and unclear and only through staring at the piece for a good amount of time in the correct way does the true image come through. The My Lai Massacre pervades the text from the opening sentence but the text encircles the event and when it gets close will then back away. The text is mimetic in that way. The very form takes the structure of the memory, of the attempt to reconcile the events and actions with a sense of personhood. Thus the story could not be told any other way.
I was interested in the dueling possible outcomes for Kathy’s murder/death/escape or the possibility of the couple conspiring for a new future. As Kangkang and Amanda mentioned, the narrator’s voice comes through clearly in the hypothesis sections and connects us to O’Brien’s trademark of freedom of interpretation (a theme which infiltrated Cacciato and Things They Carried). It all boils down to the portraiture of our protagonist. It seems that because John escapes the necessity of a trial, the readers must play that role instead, that each hypothesis had grounds for coloration but it ultimately must be decided by us, the jury, based on evidence and gut reaction. I think John has lapses of sanity, that there is a separation between “mens rea” and “actus rea” which leaves us questioning the true nature of the crime committed if there was one. The slippery nature of assigning one outcome requires us to assert that there is a fact vs fiction which can’t be proved (this dichotomy seems to be yet another of O’Brien’s fascinations). Thankfully we are not a jury under oath but a group of readers. If we were optimistic people, we might say that Kathy and John planned an elaborate escape to rebuild their marriage in another country. If we are realists we might argue that she ran away (to be with the dentist, out of fear, to leave him for good, or simply to clear her head). If we get to John’s ultimate fears, the story I think our narrator is most trying to sell us on, he’s a shallow husband, a murderer, and has destroyed his own salvation out of grief for the death of his facade.
I don’t know if I can really say what happened to Kathy. I don’t think there is a firm answer that can be proposed with sufficient evidence. But I also don’t think that was really the point of the novel. O’Brien’s strength lies in the “maybe’s” and plausible mysteries. It is always the in-betweens that O’Brien is at his strongest. He forces us to remain suspended between two worlds, two realities and hold these two sometimes contradictory ideas or outcomes in front of us as readers at the same time. Similar to The Things They Carried, O’Brien is concerned with the mystery and tension of the space in-between memory, truth, and reality. He writes to deepen those moments for the waters. Even on page 30 which is fairly early on in the novel, the footnotes the author declares that after four years of “hard labor” he’s little more to show for it than “supposition and possibility” (30). John Wade is a “magician” who did not give away many of his tricks (30). The author than goes on to explain that “evidence is not truth. It is only evident” (30). And then, most pointedly, “Kathy Wade is forever missing, and if you require solutions, you will have to look beyond these pages. Or read a different book” (30). O’Brien is using anticlimax to inform the reader of the outcome of the novel and yet we continue reading even we are pretty much told the outcome of the story. It’s the mystery he is concerned with and that he chooses to wrap the story around, not the actual event.
Of all the novels we have read this semester, In the Lake of the Woods was the most difficult to read from an emotional standpoint. By the time I finished ‘The Nature of the Beast’ (Chapter 13), I was completely devastated and disgusted; it took me a while to finish the chapter, in fact. More so than any of Tim O’Brien’s other novels, I felt as if I was there in the midst of the violence because his descriptions were so vivid and horrifying.
Although I knew that this depiction was based on true events that occurred in the My Lai massacre, because it was couched in the very fictional story of John Wade and the disappearance of his wife Kathy, I was almost able to treat that chapter as pure fiction as well. Perhaps part of this was my desire to distance myself from the horrors described and the pleasure some of the men took from violence. The surreal description of the pink sunlight and the dreamy quality of the air also worked to create an almost magical or mystifying effect to the landscape – as if John Wade’s obsession with magic and illusion had been imprinted on the scene itself and it wasn’t entirely real.
Despite O’Brien’s affinity for playing with truth and reality, I ultimately think we are supposed to see this chapter as very real and very unsettling; the historical information in the ‘Evidence’ chapters certainly does this (I couldn’t help but link Ambrose Bierce and John Wade as both veterans and missing persons, for example). Furthermore, I think it is important that the inclusion of the massacres by the British and Americans soldiers comes after the reader acts as witness to the killings at Thuan Yen and grapples with the truth it contains. When I first learned about the history of the American Revolution and the Civil War, there was never much emphasis placed on the atrocities that British and American soldiers participated in. Instead, the focus was on the bravery of soldiers fighting for freedom. Now in reading the accounts of these massacres in the ‘Evidence’ chapter, I had a mind full of horrific scenes to make the historical come alive. It also made me think about our discussion of trauma and healing last class – how it is important that listeners act as witnesses in hearing someone’s trauma, but also recognizing that a burden of knowledge comes with listening.
The structure of O’Brien’s novel lends itself to the question of truth. O’Brien approaches the narrative in a nonlinear manner and also mixes the nature of domestic and war realms. While past experiences of John Wade come and go, lines are blurred for the reader. In terms of romantic relationships, John appears to connect the two, which may suggest his ability to perform violence on the ones he loves. John is cleaning and drinking the day after Kathy goes missing; as John cleans, the “ammonia afterscent,” which is reminiscent of an “operating room smell,” forces “an illicit little tug at his memory [bringing back the smell of] antiseptics and jungle” (79). John equates romantic love with the violent love he receives in battle. After all, the narrative notes that the only reason John joins the military is in order to receive love from others. After his secret is revealed to Kathy, John’s subconscious transforms their romantic home into a battlefield.
Contrastingly, Claude supports this mixing of domestic and violent spheres when he questions John about possible romantic quarrels. He suggests that it is normal to fight, that he and Ruth sometimes do, and that fighting results when they “get itchy in the temper,” which often results in “pitching hand grenades across the kitchen” (91). O’Brien’s depiction of the domestic sphere forces the reader to look more closely at the depiction of gender roles in the novel and how those roles can be challenged through violent experiences.
I found this novel very unsettling. The unique structure was cool and I found that the “evidence” did provide good depth and complications to the two main characters, but I wonder if I would’ve been more interested if these complications had been brought out in scene. I thought it was very smart of OBrien to include the bulk of the My Lai Massacre section right next to theory of Kathy’s murder because the violence and evil in the two sections worked to convince me that John was guilty. I don’t know if OBrien has a preference for how readers interpret the ending, but structuring those two sections so close to each other definitely made me feel like I was supposed to detest John. In all the OBrien novels we’ve read I definitely feel like John is the most evil character out of all of them, yet I still feel like OBrien tried to redeem him in a way? I think it’s really interesting that OBrien consistently crafts terrible characters but almost seems to want to defend them? I’m not sure if I articulated that correctly but you get the gist.
In the context of the other novels by Tim O’brien that we have read, re-reading this book raised a lot of questions for me in terms of its structure. This novel is far and away different from the other O’brien works that we have read in terms of its content and structure, but still maintains some of the thematic threads that O’brien has discussed previously in Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. One notable difference in this novel is the inclusion of the “Evidence” chapters and the role in ciphering out the Truth in the narrative. As Amanda suggested, this novel reads like a true crime book many times during the novel, which helps lend itself to the mystery/suspense/thriller genre. These sections of the novel are suppose to indicate the truth at the heart of this investigation (and the novel in general), but even then many of the witness testimonies in these sections are biased and possibly rife with inaccuracies, falsehoods, and partial truths. It is in these sections of the novel that I find connective threads between O’Brien’s other works and In the Lake of the Woods. O’brien’s usage of “truth” in his novel leave the readers in suspense of their own as O’brien blends factual truth, emotional truth, and straight up falsehoods.
In the Lake of the Woods, one aspect that interested me is the relationship between John Wade’s political campaign and war itself. Primarily the scene on pages 160 and 161 where John and Kathy are speaking to Tony Carbo. John says, “He’s right, I guess. First the election, then worry about the rest” (160). This scene reminded me of Wade’s uncertainty of why the Vietnam war was happening in the first place, and more so by Kathy saying, “Win and win again…and it won’t ever stop, will it?” (160). The cycle of war is unending, it just keeps happening, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This theme is present in almost all of the literature we’ve read this semester, like Vonnegut’s glaciers. On page 161, Tony says it is “The American Way, tried and true,” adding to O’Brien’s general commentary on the war and how America handled it. The campaign trail is a mountain that eventually comes crashing down onto Wade (5).
After Kathy and Wade decide the pregnancy is bad timing for the campaign and terminate it, O’Brien writes, “they had sacrificed some essential part of themselves for the possibilities of an ambiguous future” (158). I couldn’t help but see the sacrifice of going to war as a parallel for this scene and the uncertainty of winning or losing, or what it would all mean in the end.
There were a lot of elements that stood out to me in this novel, from its plots to its subplots. The presence of trauma was pervasive throughout the entire narrative, however, it stood out most poignantly in regard to Kathy and John’s relationship. O’Brien’s unconventional narrative structure–excerpts of testimony regarding the My Lai Massacre and Kathy’s disappearance, flashbacks to Vietnam/subplot, hypothesizations into the future/Kathy’s disappearance–lent the reader a great deal of insight into the storyline and its intricately complex and moving parts.
The relationship between Kathy and John was a prominent area of focus in the novel that served as a sort of tangible manifestation for demonstrating how trauma/PTSD (in this case, John’s war/combat trauma) can both subtly and overtly permeate every aspect of a person’s being, no matter the distance from the time of trauma or the repression/distortion of the memory from consciousness. These elements of memory impairment can be noted specifically in how John recalls both instances of trauma and also seemingly normal instances (i.e. his difficulty explaining his movements/actions on the night of Kathy’s disappearance to the officer’s in a linear/coherent way). We see this struggle with memory further in relation to his recollection of the acts he committed in Vietnam.
Another element of trauma that stood out in John and Kathy’s relationship was the level of codependency demonstrated by both characters. Both were depicted as unhappy in their marriage, and in general, yet determinedly set on salvaging their relationship at whatever costs; each constantly placing their happiness in the other’s future. Rather than reading this dedication to their relationship as passion or love or commitment, it seemed to be done with reservation, resentment, and self-sacrifice, making it read more as codependency and identity-enmeshment. These fear-based attachment styles, formed by trauma–be it childhood or later experiences–lead both to stifle their individual well-being out of fear; fear of abandonment, fear of loss of control, fear of emptiness are all revealed in both John and Kathy’s actions and dialogue, in whats said and left unsaid.
By interweaving various moments and perspectives from John’s life into the story’s present situation, as well as by including an avid interest in magic, O’Brien illustrates a blurry but fuller portrait of John’s character; ultimately revealing a sort of trauma timeline for him, and notably, its lack of a current or foreseen distinct ending.
Honestly, I thought the structure of the book was just another example of postmodernism. I appreciate how he plays the structure to further tell the story and provide alternative ideas and narratives into the story. I thought he did a really good job at giving each person a specific voice, specifically during the evidence chapters. While it did feel gimmicky at times, I kind of liked how it kept me guessing what truly happened to her. I think O’Brien chose this form just to be experimental. It is obvious in previous works that he loves to play with perspective and narrative, so it does not surprise me he continued to do it in this work. I think it also was very hard to write in this form while also keeping the reader engaged, so this could be a way of just further exhibiting his skills to his readers. I don’t really think there’s anything we can truly say I asked what happened to Kathy besides her craving a life beyond politics. It wouldn’t shock me if she disappeared to escape, especially after experiencing her husband’s PTSD second hand. Honestly, if I were her, I wouldn’t really see a reason to stick around either. But with that said, I assume she most likely died after taking the boat because Girl Scouts’ survival skills will not help her in the long run.
There is not a whole lot of evidence to go on about what happened to Kathleen, but if I had to speculate, I would venture she escaped from her life and is living happily ever after. I liked a lot of the hypothesis chapters. The one when she watched him the night before her disappearance while he was naked and pouring boiling water over pots is the one I choose to follow. It tells the story of her taking the boat and trying to find her way around the lake, but the book does not offer an end to that one either. I choose to think she had enough sense to take her wallet with her and she was able to navigate to a shore that she could escape to. Maybe she ended up in Canada. The possibilities are endless but from what I read in the book, she was unhappy and the boiling water on the plants could have put her over the edge.