Comparing In The Lake Of The Woods And Nando Parrado

John Wade, from In the Lake of the Woods, and Nando Parrado in Miracle in the Andes, seem to have completely opposite outlooks on their past, current situation, and futures. John Wade is utterly trapped by his past, while Nando Parrado seems to use his past as a slingshot into his future. However, these seemingly very different viewpoints can be validated and confirmed using Freud’s opinions in the following ways: Freud would diagnose John Wade with neurotic behavior as a consequence of his surroundings and past, and Freud would also say that Nando’s love for his father didn’t get him through the terror on the mountain, but rather Nando’s father became the only super ego in his life because of the isolation of civilization.
John Wade went through many traumatic events in his lifetime making his perspective on life and the future a very negative one. Firstly, John experienced an

abusive father both mentally and emotionally; secondly, the suicide of his father; lastly, his experience fighting in the Vietnam War. As a child, he became very interested in magic. He was able to vanish and sometimes fool himself into forgetting the past or the dread of the future. Through magic he was able to imagine a different world that was very real to him. He pretended and tricked and fooled until it became his reality. This could be described as neurotic behavior. “Long ago, as a kid, he’d learned the secret of making his mind into a blackboard. Erase the bad stuff. Draw in pretty new pictures.” (O’Brien 133). John Wade’s traumatic and difficult past did not give him any hope to cling to when things became rough for him. Because he did not have a good foundation and childhood he did not have anything to support him or to stand on during the rough times. Happiness for John Wade was something that was unattainable. He was not able to look at the future in a positive light because of the obstacles in his past.
Nando Parrado, on the other hand, had a very positive attitude in the dimmest possible situations. The love in his past, I believe, was one of the major things that kept him going during those extremely impossible seeming situations. He had to cope with an immeasurable amount of shock, confusion, heartbreak, and terror, but somehow the memory of his father, the solid foundation he was raised on, and the love in his heart was able to pull him through these dark moments. “My love for my father swelled in my heart, and I realized that, despite the hopelessness of my situation, the memory of him filled me with joy… I would walk until I had walked all the life out of me, and when I fell I would die that much closer to my father.” (Parrado 201).
Despite how different John Wade and Nando Parrado’s outlooks appear to be, Freud’s theories can be applied to both Wade and Parrado.

According to Freud, John Wade was a neurotic person who had become neurotic when his ego failed to deal with its desires through repression or displacement or renunciation of instinct. “...the neurotic creates substitutive satisfactions for himself in his symptoms, and these either cause him suffering in themselves overcome sources of suffering for him by raising difficulties in his relations with his environment and the society he belongs to.” (Freud 89). Wade was unable to look towards the future because of everything he had faced in his past. Freud could also validate Nando Parrado’s behavior using his theories by saying that Nando placed his father as the “super ego”. The super ego can be defined as the conscience. With this in mind, this concept can be easily recognized throughout Nando’s time on the mountain. The super ego watches the ego’s every move and punishes with guilt and anxiety. Nando felt guilt and anxiety multiple times while on the

mountain.
John Wade and Nando Parrado are two people with seemingly completely unrelated views on their past, present, and future. Freud, however, I believe is able to argue both of their views from his ideas of neurosis and his structural model of the psyche. Through Freud’s analysis of these men, I think there is something to be learned from both of them. From John Wade, I believe one can learn that neurosis is something that happens to you as a product of the outer environment. Also that because of that, it is difficult, if not impossible, to picture a better future for oneself. For Nando, I can see that if one has a strong foundation of love and support to act as their super ego, that one can keep a positive outlook on life no matter the circumstances.