Husband, Veteran, and Murderer? It’s human nature that people want to see the good in others. While reading In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brian, the reader can not help but feel empathetic towards John, and want to believe that his powerful love towards Kathy is incapable of causing her harm. Although a lot of the evidence suggests that Kathy had taken it upon herself to run away, or simply have wandered away and have gotten lost, the evidence towards John as a possible murderer thwarts any probability of Kathy being the cause of her own disappearance; John’s experience in Vietnam and twisted relationship with Kathy epitomizes his potential as a murderer. First, due to his experiences in combat in Vietnam, John’s has a probable case of …show more content…
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which could have caused him to forget carrying out certain traumatic events such as murder.
J. W. Appel and G. W. Beebe (Professors of Psychiatry) concluded that, “there is no such thing as ‘getting used to combat’ … psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare” (O’Brian 27). One of the major indicators that John is Kathy’s murderer is that he does not remember the night she had disappeared. However, John does remember details after the night such as the “Ammonia after-scent in the air, an operating rooms smell,” and to which “he felt an illicit little tug at his memory” (O’Brian 78). The smell of ammonia usually corresponds to the burning of human flesh. After John had boiled the water, he had poured it onto Kathy, also pouring the water on the flowers to perhaps mask the smell, and his crime. Psychology would also explain that the “illicit tug” he feels in his memory is a defense mechanism …show more content…
John uses to suppress the memory of murdering his wife out of his consciousness. Similarly, he tries to keep the events at Thuan Yen from himself, “the secret of Thuan Yen, so secret that he sometimes kept it a secret from himself” (O’Brian 73). Secrets are meant to be hidden from others. If John is trying to keep Thuan Yen a secret from himself, he is hiding this experience so much that he has succeeded in un-experiencing the event. In order to protect himself from PTSD, the traumatic experience of Thuan Yen and the murder of his wife, John uses repression as a defense mechanism in order to clear his name and keep his pride as a veteran, politician, and husband. Furthermore, John’s desire to be close with Kathy ultimately separates them because John’s mathematical equation one plus one equals zero exemplifies love’s ability to consume an individual until nothing is left.
In the beginning of their relationship, John had compared his love with Kathy to two pairs of snakes he had seen while touring Vietnam, “each snake eating the other’s tail, a bizarre circle of appetites that brought the heads closer and closer until one of the men in the Charlie Company used a machete to end it…one plus one equals zero” (O’Brian 61). The couple were so desperate to feel love that they consume each other until the only thing left is their individual selves. Since one cannot live without the other, and the violent separation foreshadows Kathy’s disappearance. Which is also why when John kills Kathy he cannot live with himself and becomes desperate to find her. Moreover, early on in their relationship Kathy was aware that “More than anyone she’d ever known, John needed the conspicuous display of human love... Love without limit. Like a hunger, she thought” (O’Brian 55). John desperately wants to be loved by his wife leading him to imagine himself climbing inside of Kathy’s body and consuming her insides like a parasite sucking the life from its host. John explains that, “he wanted to swim through her blood and climb up and down her spine and drink from her ovaries, and press his gums against the firm red muscle of her heart. He wanted to suture their
lives together” (O’Brian 71). Bit by bit, John’s love consumes Kathy both emotionally and physically. He does this until she becomes an empty shell of a human being. This is symbolic because it corresponds to the theme of love and its ability to consume an individual until their former self is the only thing that is left. John’s love for Kathy consumes him and causes him to become a killer, whereas Kathy’s love for John had blinded her to her husbands faults and ultimately lead her to her death. It wasn’t just the John’s experience in the war that turned him into a murderer. John’s constant need for the affection that his father could not provide him caused him to develop a special relationship with Kathy. Contrary to some beliefs that John had loved and feared losing Kathy too much to want her to murder her, John’s psychopathic tendencies such as his need for control and power had lead to Kathy’s death. In order for John to regain control over their relationship, John killed Kathy so that this way he could accomplish his ideal of one plus one equals zero.
Killing Mr. Griffin is a story, which captures the reader’s attention by developing themes. It’s suspenseful; it includes topics from love and friendship to guilt and murder. Susan McConnell had a slow life, but at a sudden moment, she gets hit by a social wave and is caught in a wave of peer pressure, manipulation, psychopaths and a battle of her conscience. The moral lesson that has been shown inside the book is being careful for what you wish for. The grass might seem greener on the other side but is it actually? People don’t always seem how they appear to be either good or bad (Mr. Griffin, Mark Kinney.)
Kathy's odd disappearance is haunting the reader all the way throughout the novel. Her husband?s unstable emotional being is somewhat a key to the mystery. We examine his inner thoughts and simultaneous occurrences, but we are still left guessing. There are various situations that lead to multiple possibilities of Kathy?s disappearance. Did John eat Kathy? Did she take the boat and vanish, or did John murder her, and hide her in the Lake of the Woods? These are all possible hypotheses that will be looked into and taken apart to find out what really happened to Kathy.
Around the time leading up to John becoming an activist there has been several groups being formed and events happening. The Vietnam War was happening aroun...
Throughout the story “In the Lake of the Woods”, there are footnotes every few chapters. In the footnotes, different people all speak on whatever is currently happening in the book at different points in time. Each footnote is presented as a piece of evidence which include stories from some of the people who knew both Kathy and John. In the footnotes, the narrator is speaks in the first person, which implies that he, like the main character, fought in Vietnam. The footnotes add legitimacy to what is being told in the story, instead of destabilizing it. They also give the story a new layer because they skip time periods ranging from when he was a boy, to the war, and to his current situation. The reason that the footnotes work is because, instead of coming out of nowhere, the facts being presented, are almost from the author himself so it is not just a bunch of random information thrown at the reader all at once.
The chapter on fecundity addresses the bizarre ways that nature has evolved to ensure the continuity of a species. As the title suggests, fecundity deals with the fertility of species where Annie Dillard explores the inefficiency of fertility and the brutality of nature’s evolution. In the end, Dillard concludes that death is a part of life.
John Young is a United States Army veteran who fought in the Vietnam War from 1966-1969. During his tour in Vietnam, he formed close bonds with his unit and witnessed the horrors of war, including the deaths of many of his friends. Witnessing these events led John to
All sense of individuality and self worth is taken way from the narrator when her name is never revealed to the audience. Furthermore, John continues to belittle his wife by giving her the command to not walk around at night. Although the John thinks in his mind that he is looking out for the best interest of his wife, in actuality, he is taking away his wife’s abilities to make choices for herself. There is a possibility that John’s controlling personality is one of the factors that led to his wife’s psychosis. Such a controlling life style more than likely limited the narrator’s ability to live any life outside of the home.
The book I chose to read is called, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by: Richard Louv. I chose this book for a few different reasons. One reason I chose this book was because I’ m highly interested in the whole concept of the book and feel very passionate about its reasoning. I also thought it would be a great read to guide me towards a topic for my main project at the end of the Lemelson program. On the plus side, I “read” this book through audible, which enabled me to listed to the book on my drive to and from work everyday. I commonly do this because of my forty-five minute commute from Truckee to Spanish Springs.
John Wade is an odd character in this novel as he goes through dramatic shifts in his life. Before the My Lai uncovering, John was seen as a respectable guy. He was physical attractive, had a “beautiful woman” (21) as his wife and he was polished. Behind all that though was something, disturbing to say the least. John would “wake up in the middle of the night screaming sometimes” (29). This was an indication that there were problems he was dealing with, and he was. John's depressing childhood and horrors of the My Lai incident eventually consumed him. John's childhood was rough because he had an abusive father which evidently, has s...
Although the narrator feels desperate, John tells her that there is “no reason” for how she feels, she must dismiss those “silly fantasies”(166). In other words, John treats her like a child and gives her reason to doubt herself. “Of course it is only nervousness”(162). She decides. She tries to rest, to do as she is told, like a child, but suffers because John does not believe that she is ill. This makes her feel inadequate and unsure of her own sanity.
Throughout the text, the reader clearly sees that John has approached the near imprisonment of his wife with very tender and caring words and actions. He always refers to his “little gooses (Charters 228), his darling, and his dear, and he reads her bed time stories. However, the protagonist, as well as the reader, soon begin to see through this act. John may act as if he simply just cares about his wife, and that is why he is putting her through this. But why then does he not listen when she says that she feels worse rather than better? (Charters 232). Because he is not doing it for her at all. He is far more concerned for his career. He is a physician after all, and to have a mentally and physically unstable wife would be tumultuous for his future in that vocation. So he must lock her away in this vacation, away from civilization, so that no one will know. It seems that the protagonist realizes her husbands motives early on, but she is unwilling to believe what she fears is true. She willingly suspends her disbelief of her husband. She says things such as, “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick” (Charters 231). In these statements she is not trying to communicate an idea to a reader, but rather attempting desperately to convince herself of the idea. Ultimately she succeeds, and this leads to her final mental collapse. Her willing suspension of disbelief causes her to
In society there is a longing for a story to have a nice and neat happy ending. Broadway and the theater originally would give this to their audience, especially in America. Give the audience what the want! They want happy endings that mirror their own values and interpretations of how the world should be and at the end of it should be, “and they all lived happily ever after.” The fairy tale ending is something society hopes, dreams, and strives for since we could listen to our parents read us fairy tales with these sweet stories of finding true love and having to fight the odds to be the Prince or Princess you deserve to be. With Into the Woods, Lapine and Sondheim sought out to explore what could go wrong with “happily ever after.” Effectively leaving the audience with the adage, “be careful what you ask for…”
This ‘insane’ act serves only to show how lost the narrator’s mind is. The narrator also reveals that she has a rope that she will use “if that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her” (236). The woman is a symbol of the narrator’s pre-nervous disorder personality. She essentially uses the statement to say that if the woman she once was escaping, she will hang herself. Finally, the story reaches its climax, in which John and the narrator have a final standoff in the now wall paperless bedroom (237).
John Button was a loving, caring, active and an innocent man. John’s relationship with girlfriend Rosemary Anderson was strong. They planed to get married and Rosemary’s family accepted John for who he was and was already thinking of him as a son in law. “She was all he could think of: he was in love and was still consumed by the beautiful night at the Skyline Drive-in”. John was caring and always thoughtful of other living things. “John was upset when he saw the first kangaroo die from Colin’s shot… He was too soft hearted to shoot”. As a child and teenager John loved to keep active by attending ballroom dancing which he was in love with. Button was innocent of killing Rosemary, but fierce police questioning and the police failing to investigate the case thoroughly lead to his imprisonment. There was little physical evidence to prove John’s guilt. “… looking for blood, flesh or human hair which was likely if the car had hit a human...
The water beats at the bank feel gently, and resides carefully to avoid over soaking it. The air is fresh and overwhelming with cool gushes of wind blowing past, provoking the trees to yawn and some times sleep. It was a lovely Valentine day and perfect for a picnic at Lake Lavon.