Tim OBriens novel In the Lake of the Woods - Research Paper Example

Order 347981 Topic: Tim O’Brien’s novel In the Lake of the Woods Introduction: The wise saying goes, the falling star forewarns a calamity. The author creates a grim and somber situation right from the first first page of the novel and makes his intentions clear—that he expects the reader to tackle a confusing situation that he is about to create in the man woman relationship. This is the never-ending story through the Ages—it is about him and her! John and Kathy! It is a joint operation-rescue! Each one of them is on a mission to salvage what remains within their inner worlds and try rejuvenation. Will they succeed? Tim is not interested in promising a happy ending to the readers and ravels in creating confusing situations. The summing up the is directional right from the word go! He writes, “It was a terrible time in their lives and they wanted desperately to be happy. They wanted happiness without knowing what it was, or where to look, which made them want it all the time.”(p.3) The backdrop of the place they are visiting also adds to the grim scenario. Tim describes the place of their visit thus: “There were no roads at all. There were no towns and no people....where the water was everything, vast and very cold, and where there were secret channels and portages and bays and tangled forests and island without names. Everywhere, for many thousand square miles, the wilderness was all one thing...always the same.”(OBrien,p.1) Tim makes the picture and the shape of things to come, very clear. But the processes through which Tim makes them experience their lives is intriguing as well as interesting. The strength of the novel is the portrayal of the most critical juncture of the man-woman relationship. What happened to Kathy Wade? The pages of history of Vietnam War are daubed in bloodshed of many innocents. Heinous situations in the war-front regularly took place. Many soldiers committed cruel acts which they should not have done and perhaps they would not do in the normal circumstances. Innocents dying was not a happy sight and the recollection of such events was disturbing to the mind and damaging to the psyche. When soldiers returned from war, failed to recoup their original mental balance, and suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was the mental condition of John. In such a grim plight of ones personality, one can do the most damaging acts without realizing the aftermath. Murdering one who was most near to him-his wife, could have been normal for an individual with such an abnormal state of mind. Such dastardly crime requires unassailable evidence and that is available for the investigating detective. Tim writes how John entered the bedroom with the tea-kettle and how he observed Kathy there. He was certainly not there to offer tea and biscuits to her. “It was almost a fact, but not quiet, that he moved down the hallway to their bedroom that night, where for a period of time he watched Kathy sleep…At one point he remembered her eyelids had snapped open” (OBrien,188-189).His action preceding to the entry in to the bedroom is noteworthy. He had boiled the plants to death. He held the kettle in his hand and arrived straight to his wife.“Odd, he thought. The numbness inside him. The way his hands had no meaningful connection to his wrist” (OBrien,50). This shows he had lost balance of his mind and consequently control over his actions. Kathys sudden waking up indicates that he had poured the boiling water on her, without realizing the gravity or the consequences of his action. Further proof is available as for the intense suffering of Kathy. “In the dark she seemed to smile at him. Then she jerked sideways, puffs of steam rose from the sockets of her eyes. Impossible, of course” (OBrien,84). How the smile and the puff of steam can go together? The smile was the hallucination in the mind of John. Actually, it was the shriek of Kathy. But he continued to boil Kathy to death as an imbalanced individual will not give up the action or the idea being pursued by him at a given time. Reverting to the normal mood is not the easiest of the tasks for an individual suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. John dumps her into the lake and after sinking her to the bottom, returns home and forgets what transpired until then. As time passes by, the random pictures of the happenings of the night before, begin to flash in the curtain of his mind. When Patty arrived to see him, more or less he was normal. That was the reason why he rushed to the boat house in the middle of the night, with a guilty feeling. “A sense of pre-memory washed over him. Things had happened here. Things said things done” (OBrien,188). This makes it clear as to John recapitulated what he did and knew where exactly Kathy was and he was quick on the follow-up act. Tim describes the situation in a few crisp, meaningful sentences. “He didn’t think about it. Quick, he stripped naked and filled his lungs and dove to the bottom where Kathy was” (OBrien,242). “From the bottom of the lake, eyes wide open, Kathy Wade watches the fish fly up to swim in the land of sky blue waters...” (OBrien,286). “Kathy stares up at him from beneath the surface of a silvered lake…she swims in the blending twilight of it in between” (OBrien,288). The author was hinting at the final developments of the story right from the beginning, in a subtle style. During the course of their conversation, the author describes Kathys movement thus: “She seemed to vanish into the heavy dark, the fog curling around her, and when she spoke, her voice came from somewhere far away, as if lifted from her body, unattached and not quite authentic.”(OBrien,6) At the end of the story, John has realization about his inadvertent doings. “Had he harmed her? Well no, but yes” (OBrien,283). This statement reveals everything. His actions were not intentional but one side of his personality had no regrets about what happened. He was not willing to own the responsibility for the actions, for he did not mean what he did. His action was foul, but his intentions were not! Nevertheless, he was sorry for what he did and his next mission was to commit suicide. In fine, it can be safely asserted that John boiled Kathy to death by pouring hot water on her with a tea kettle. He treated her on par with the house plants on which he poured boiling water first. He thought by committing suicide the ends of justice would be met as what he did to Kathy was the foulest act. The clinching evidence to the whole episode is the statement of admission of Tim OBrien, the veteran of Vietnam War. He says he wrote the story “to give me back my vanished life” (OBrien,298). His final quote is revealing, touching and the fitting finale to the story. “All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only may be.” Edward Tick gives a heart-rending description about the mental condition of Art, a Vietnam War veteran, who works in a post office, as he explains to his psychiatrist, “I have double vision, “ Art declared, “I will be standing at post office window selling stamps to an old lady, and at the same time, Ill be seeing NVA(North Vietnamese Army regulars) charging up the hill at my machine gun post. It takes all the control I can muster to stay at my window and just count out change.” (Tick, p.12) He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The condition of John with the kettle with boiling water should have been the same. He was having double vision, and confused mind and lost control over his actions. He was out to kill Kathy as if he would kill a Vietnam soldier. The troubled spirit of Vietnam was evident at both the fronts. The vacillating political leaders who had their own compulsions whether to continue with the war or give it up abruptly! The end of war was not the final solution. The post-war repercussions in USA and also as related to world politics were not encouraging. Moreover,it was a war of ideology-communism versus capitalism. One miscalculation could result in the end of political careers of many top politicians at the most unexpected juncture. President Nixons position was comparable to that of the main character in the novel John. With the participation in the Vietnam War to his credit, he spent years building a successful political career. Some adverse revelations about his past as a soldier in Vietnam, upset the applecart, and his bid for U. S. Senate was thwarted. He lost the election by a landslide, and he was on a new mission to reconstruct his devastated personal life. Nixons fall from grace, public support and eventually from the President-ship is comparable to the plight of John. During the ongoing war, his troubled spirit and indecision bothered him a lot and caused confusion in his top-circle of decision makers. Kimball describes, "Nixon is shouting and pounding his desk, while Kissinger is trying to speak." (p. 163). Like Khrushchev taking off his shoe to pound on a desk at the United Nations, hyper powers believe in their ability to emphasize what they say when considering options like "Were gonna take out the dikes, were gonna take out the power plants, were gonna take out Haiphong, were gonna level that goddamn country!" (p. 163). The decisions coming out of the evil minds are difficult to implement and they lead to bitterly unpleasant consequences and loss of life of the innocents. The family lives of the fighting soldier and the politician who takes decisions to make the soldiers fight, are bound to be affected adversely. War is a serious endeavor. It affects every segment of countrys economy and individual lives of citizens. The news about the war situation flashed by the electronic and print media create psychological upheavals even with those individuals who are not directly connected to war. For those who are part of the war in the discharge of their duties, like marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen it is the daunting experience and an issue of life or death. For the family members, it is the moment to moment mental torture. The Vietnam War was the double-cursed tragedy both for America and Vietnam. The innocents on either sides suffered. How one would feel when it is known that ones family member or companion was in the enemy prison? Rick Newman recounts the “....horror stories about American Pilots who had gone down in that part of North Vietnam, close the border with Laos. Often they were murdered the moment they were discovered by local Vietnamese militias. Other times they were captured and tortured only to die miserably before they ever made it to infamous prisons like the Hanoi Hilton. They were even shot at their parachutes while descending. Those who tangled in trees could be wounded and left hanging until they bled to death.”(Newman,2007,p.5-6) Such “Misty” warriors suffered untold miseries. But the stories of those warriors who never returned home caused immense and irreversible pain to the immediate family members. The horrors the families went through were incredible. Those who fought and died reached the shores of the land from no one ever returns! For the family members it was the beginning of the tortuous journey, to tackle the bureaucratic officials. The uncertainty about the whereabouts of the missing soldier and the interminable waits, the struggles of the wives to find out the truth, were too much to endure. *********** Works Cited. Kimball, Jeffrey. The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon Era Strategy (Modern War Studies). University Press of Kansas; 1ST edition,2003. Newman,Rick(Author), Shepperd, Don(Author), McCain,Senator John(Foreword). Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail Presidio Press,2007. OBrien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. Penguin (Non-Classics); 1995 Tick, Edward. War and the Soul: Healing Our Nations Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Quest Books; 2005 Read More