Constant Failure is a Path to the Dark Side
Failure can be hard to process or deal with, especially for those who would do anything to succeed. After many useless attempts to progress, the mind tends to turn to dark thoughts. These thoughts are classified as physiological problems. The main character of In the Lake of The Woods by Tim O’Brien displays John Wade, whose most desired dream is to become a politician. He is married to the love of his life, Kathy, who he came across in college and could not live without. They live together in a small cabin in the woods, where they are cut off from the rest of the society. As the course of the story goes on it contains a lot of flashbacks that give important incite to the characters history.
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It appears to be clear that he starts to develop some physiological issues after losing his father at a young age due to alcohol. The grass is not much greener on the other side for John, as he grew up and entered adulthood. The unsolved mystery of who killed Kathy is under investigations throughout the story, but the killer is still on the loose. John still faces the doomed fate of failure. The human mind can only take some much of defeat before it becomes mentally unstable. Inferiority Complex may seem unheard of, but it is found to be more common than many people think. It is a physiological disorder defined as lack of self-esteem which can be caused by having feelings of doubt, uncertainty, and not amounting to their standards. People who are afflicted are likely to have experienced negative lifestyles either during childhood or adulthood. Those negative events impacted their life, leading to the lack of self-worth. There are two types of inferiority complex; primary inferiority and secondary inferiority. Primary inferiority stems from childhood experiences of weakness, helplessness, and dependency. As they grow up it brings stronger feelings towards siblings, romantic partners, and adults. Often times it may seem like they are obsessed with someone in their life. Secondary inferiority is negative experiences of not fulfilling their ideal goal most likely to occur during adulthood. The thought of how far they are away from their goals can trigger negative or depressed feelings. Making them feel like they cannot achieve anything and lowers their self-worth. Inferiority complex appears in subconscious thoughts that drive the affected individual to overdo, resulting in either spectacular achievement or extreme asocial behavior. The more seen cases are the extreme asocial behavior while the rare seen cases are the spectacular achievements. John’s father always made fun of him about his weight.
He was built big and thick but his father always under the influence of alcohol thought it was fine to say cruel comments to his son. By him not knowing just how sensitive John was. It made John want to alter his self in order to satisfy his father. “He was husky. He had big bones. But sometimes I think his father made him feel-oh, made him feel-oh-maybe overweight. In sixth grade the boy wrote away for a diet he’d seen advertised in some silly magazine…His father teased him quite a lot” (O’Brien,10). This quote is an example of how his father’s words influenced him to want to be someone other than who he was. The teasing was the start of hate building together. A young and innocent John did not know that his father was not sensible during that time. As a matter of fact, he was too young to understand about alcoholism and affects it has on a person. John thought his father sincerely meant those words. The product of his verbal abuse made John’s self-esteem …show more content…
lower. As a young teen, John lost his father to an alcohol addiction, although his father never really seemed to pay much attention to him. John adored his father and marveled everything about him. He felt a bond with his father; in reality his father had a bond with his alcohol. “At the funeral he wanted kill everybody who was crying and everybody who wasn’t. He wanted to take a hammer and crawl into the casket and kill his father for dying. But he was helpless” (O’Brien, 14). The quote displays how John’s mental state changed to an abnormal and sinister mind. The loss of his father at 14 years old, made him feel like he was hopeless and helpless because the man he looked up too, was no longer there. Feelings of lost and not having a friend to guide him, caused anger to rise in him, and lead to his desire to kill. Death simulates the dark nature in humans. In the beginning of his adulthood, he attended college and found Kathy, who he fell madly in love with. Kathy had a tendency to disappear and John thought that she was running away from him. So his feelings for her intensified so much that he had to watch her every move. “In early November he began spying on her. He felt some guilt at first, which bothered him, but he also found satisfaction in it. Like magic, he thought-a quick, powerful rush. He knew things he shouldn’t know” (O’Brien, 32). You can say he became a stalker. But it stems much deeper than that, due to his prior history, it is likely he suffers from primary inferiority. His self–worth is damaged beyond recognition so much by his father that it caused him to act in an asocial behavior. He was obsessed with Kathy and wanted to keep her, lead to him to do everything in his power to keep a hold on Kathy. At one point his stable and sensible mind knew what he was doing was wrong it bothered him. While the devilish and curious part of his mind took over and controlled his actions. The final straw for John was losing the elections, as a chain reaction it started the secondary inferiority. Losing made him feel that after all of that hard work he had done was worthless and did not matter, because in his mind he was still too far from his goal. He knew that after all the hardships that he had faced, he felt like he was entitled to be rewarded by getting elected. “But it was more than a lost election. It was something physical. Humiliation, that was part of it, and the wreckage in his chest and stomach, and then the rage, how it surged up into his throat and how he wanted to scream most terrible thing he could scream-Kill Jesus!”(O’Brien,5). He was mad that he would be seen as a weak man who could not win anything. Losing the election was not just the problem that fact that he could not achieve something on his own is what made him angry. That anger had built up from the death of his father and fueled his desire to kill. Pretending can only get you so far, before you have to stop and realize that reality trumps fantasies. To pretend is like dreaming, you can get ideas, but it does nothing to actually getting the plan in action and fulfilling those dreams. The key to succeed, takes faith in yourself and courage to put those dreams into action. On the contrary, John lacked both of those so that set him up for failure without him even knowing it. “It was a problem of faith. The future seemed intolerable. There was fatigue, too, and anger, but more than anything there was emptiness of disbelief” (O’Brien, 4). Suppressed dreams can be a reminder of the failures that he could not achieve. Those failed dreams pile up until he blows up like a balloon can no longer take it and explode from unhealthy amounts of stress. The fruitless dreams carry a feeling of hopelessness and may even make him feel like what his purpose in life is supposed to be. The continuous losses are what caused a lack of faith in his self. The nonsuccess eats away his sane thoughts and leaves the insane thoughts. With the constant nagging of the total loss all he has left are those insane thoughts that drive his asocial behavior. He wanted to win the election because he knew that politics was like a manipulation game. When he was in service many people thought he had powers and called him sorcerer. He thought that if could get into office then he could make a change for the better. “The teakettle made a brisk whistling sound, but John Wade could not bring himself to move. Ambush politics. Poison politics. It wasn’t fair. That was the final truth: just so unfair” (O’Brien, 49). This quote shows just how much John thought about losing the elections. The elections embedded in his mind twenty four seven, it consumed his thoughts some much that he could not control his muscles. It also displayed that he no longer trusted politics because it had betrayed him. He felt that politics was his way of making up for the things that he had done in the military, but when that fell through, so did his faith, and his humanity. He lost everything that he ever wanted and at that point Kathy was sure to be gone, too. Concluding, the human mind can only take some much of defeat before it becomes mentally unstable.
John’s life was no hope skip in the park, he suffered from a horrible childhood and it carried into his adulthood. John still failed and had to live with those failures. The failures act at him from one day to the next, he wanted so badly to succeed in something it drove him insane. His ambition was strong that he tried hard to overcompensate in a spectacular achievement, but when that fell short he went over the edge and started acting in an asocial behavior. When you mix low self-worth and anger you end up with a lethal weapon, a murder. The mystery of who killed Kathy is still up in the air, although there’s enough evidence that points straight to John, as he was the last person to be around her. His rage had grown some much over time that lost control and killed Kathy because that way she could never leave him. By him killing Kathy as sad as it is he would have finally succeeded in something, which leads him to disappear also in order to not get caught. The human mind a simply and fragile part of the body it needs to maintain a balance in order to be stable. Once that balance is broken so is the stability. That is when you create a monster on the inside that is just waiting to be
awakened
Raymond Carver's short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” leaves the reader feeling as if they have sat down at the table with a bottle of Gin and experienced first hand the effects of alcoholism and depression. In the original version of this story the “Beginners” Carver carefully crafts the many sides of an alcoholic personality developing strong knowable characters. The fundamental personalities are left fairly intact from the original version. It should be noted that the feelings that the reader are left with are due at least partially to the severe editing of the “Beginners” done by his editor and friend Gordon Lish. With this collaboration Carvers personal struggles still shine through but his intent of hope and recover from alcoholism were left mostly on the chopping block. Through many interviews and articles Raymond Carver make clear his personal struggles with alcoholism and how it has had an effect on his writing. INTERVIEWER: Where do your stories come from, then? I'm especially asking about the stories that have something to do with drinking. Carver: “At the very least it's referential. Stories long or short don't just come out of thin air.” (The Paris Review) The inner dialog and downward spiral of an alcoholic is experienced through the interaction between these personalities while discussing the topic of love. JA: I noticed recently you're using cliches in your characterizations, and I wonder if you're just observing, or recording the way a mind works. RC: It's there for a purpose; it's working for me, I think, not against me. Or at least I hope and assume this is the case!
One in every twelve adults suffer from alcoholism in the United States, and it is the most commonly used addictive substance in the world. The World Health Organization has defined alcoholism as “an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency.” Reiterated themes encompassing Jeannette Walls’ father’s addiction to alcohol are found in her novel, The Glass Castle: a memoir, which displays instances of financial instability and abuse that hurt the Walls children for the rest of their lives. The Walls’, altogether, are emotionally, physically, and mentally affected by Rex’s alcoholism, which leads to consequences on the Walls children.
Throughout this particular case the audience learns numerous details about how John 's personal life may have led him to be a killer. John was a part of a group at school known as the "freaks" who were constantly victims of the popular kids ' bullying and taunts. John was even mugged at the young age of only thirteen by some older classmates. John 's father 's response was highly negative and abusive, telling John repeatedly that he was ashamed of him and that he needed to toughen up and be a man, and bought his son illegal weapons and violent video games instead of helping his son confront his conflicts. Later in the case the jury is introduced to Leo Clayton a boy who has experienced numerous of the same traumatic events that John had been tormented with, except for the fact that Leo 's father actually listened to his sons silent cries for help and confronted Robert about John 's inappropriate behavior at school towards Leo. While this did not eliminate Leo 's problems it did open a healthy and communicative relationship between father and son and showed Leo that he was not fighting this battle alone and that he was
Even though Paul put him through emotional stress, “People enjoyed his company- John, too-” (O’Brien 66). However, this was not a typical father and son relationship. Despite the love John had for his father, Paul constantly brought John down. Whenever the family ate together, Mr. Wade would say “Holy Christ, look at the kid stuff it in, old Jiggling John” (O’Brien 67). As a result of the weight jokes, John felt pressured to purchase a diet in order to please his father. Before all the “Jiggling John” jokes, he was never bothered by his weight. Constant teasing from a loved one causes “The violation of human connection, and consequently the risk of a post-traumatic stress disorder” (O’Brien 142). John’s development of post-traumatic stress disorder began from the indirect influence of his father’s
One’s mythology can cause another’s to change. The main one being Boy’s and Dunstan’s: Since the snowball incident Dunstan and Boy have remained friends on the surface, with Boy helping Dunny financially, and Dunny showing up to Boy’s events as the war hero. But Boy’s personal mythology, unlike Dunstan’s, revolves around money and materialism. Boy believes in having a high social status along with a trophy wife. He tries to “make [Leola] into the perfect wife for a rising young entrepreneur in sugar” (124). While Dunstan is haunted everyday of the guilt of Mary’s condition, Boy doesn’t even acknowledge that the event ever occurred. But, because Dunstan is faced by the guilt his entire life, he can embrace his shadow. However, for Boy, his ego has been covering up and pushing away his shadow for most his life. In the end Boy’s shadow is simply to big to accept or overcome, the guilt of sixty years, to big to swallow, is finally eating away at him his has no other choice but to take his own life. Boy’s mythology influences Dunstan’s personal mythology to not care for money and wealth. Carl Jung, creator of Jungian Psychology said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Dunstan stays away from the things that irritate him about Boy, he learns from Boy what life is not about, and is sure not to let himself become like Boy. By
It is a fact of life that Alcoholism will distort the victim’s view of reality. With authors, they put parts of their personality and symptoms of their condition into their characters sometimes, flawed distortions included, with varying degrees
The interviews with Faulkner’s daughter Jill and his stepdaughter show a different side of the Nobel Prize-winning author. Jill speaks about her father (whom she calls “papi”) and his alcohol habits in an objective, distanced way and seems to have accepted the fact that her father was a man who cared about many people, but sometimes “would have walked on her.” One incident she talks about struck me especially. She remembers that at a party her father was drinking once again and when she asked him to stop he said to her: “No one remembered Shakespeare’s child…” Even when we take the fact into account that he was drunk at that point, this seems to me a rather cruel thing to say to one’s daughter.
People often have nicknames to describe details about themselves. Nicknames are not self-created but given to the person from friends or even comrades. In “Into The Lake Of The Woods” By Tim O' Brian, this is the case with John Wade, a former soldier that was nicknamed “Sorcerer”. John Wade is named Sorcerer because of use of magic in his youth and how the men is his squad would feel protected because of his magical powers. As Sorcerer is Wade's alter ego, it seems that it goes on to cost him dearly later in his life. Wade eventually ends up becoming governor of Minnesota and tries to run for U.S Senate. He loses in a landslide victory to his opponent as evidence of the My Lai incident is uncovered. His actions as Sorcerer start to make his life for the worse. It is seen later that Wade's wife, Kathy, is missing and Wade is soon suspected as he remains calm and not involved in the search party. O’Brien does not make it clear on how it Kathy's disappearance occurs but it is clear what happens. Sorcerer arrives again in John Wade as he pulls one final magic trick: to make Kathy disappear....forever.
“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off…” (Walls 115).In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls enlightens the reader on what it’s like to grow up with a parent who is dependent on alcohol, Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, was an alcoholic. Psychologically, having a parent who abuses alcohol is the worst thing for a child. The psychological state of these children can get of poorer quality as they grow up. Leaving the child with psychiatric disorders in the future and or being an alcoholic as well.
Willie resembled his father both physically and emotionally, this resemblance helps further the label that Willie receives. In support of this statement, on page 142, Butterfield provides the reader with a psychiatrist's observa...
Antwone Fisher was an individual that endured so many things. He faced a lot of challenges that may have seemed impossible to recover from. This story was an example of the many things that some children may experience. Antwone was not raised in an upper crust home. He did not grow up in a home in which his mother and father was present. Instead of having positive role models, he had to live with individuals that were abusive to him. When observing Antwone’s personality, one may refer to two different theorists such as Bandura and Rogers.
Alcoholism is a mental illness that is related to addiction, and difficult to free oneself from. In Frank O’Connor’s, “The Drunkard”, it becomes clear that the author uses irony as a means to show how alcoholism disrupts ones family, and affects them both socially and mentally. Due to Mick’s lack of responsibility, the Delaney family is often misjudged, and this also creates some tension between the family members when he goes to drink. For example, the mother must find work so they can afford for Mr. Delaney to attend the funeral and Larry prepares to return his father home. These are both examples of how Mick distresses his family mentally and socially. Furthermore, the reaction from both Mr.
In reaction to Clayton's recent engagement, John very selfishly spread rumors about Clayton so that to prevent him from getting a job. This is the climax of the story where John realizes everything that he has done and how out of character he has become. He decides to resolve his problems by visiting a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist gave John a stress relieving activity and everything became back to normal again.
The story provides many sources for the boy's animosity. Beginning with his home and overall environment, and reaching all the way to the adults that surround him. However, it is clear that all of these causes of the boy's isolation have something in common, he has control over none of these factors. While many of these circumstances no one can expect to have control over, it is the culmination of all these elements that lead to the boy’s undeniable feeling of lack of control.
In the end we find out that John had not raped and killed the two little girls he was found with, but instead he had happened upon them and tried to bring them back to life; only it was too late. Seeing the fantastical nature of the situation the guards who knew the truth were unable to free John of the charges he was facing and they had to kill him anyways.