In The Lake Of The Woods Analysis

Words: 670
Pages: 3

The first few pages of In the Lake of the Woods, it’s very straightforward that the book is written in an unorthodox style. In most of the book they’re chapters normally written in the third person which talks about John Wade and the disappearance of Kathy Wade. But in other chapters, they are known as “Evidence” and they consist nothing but pieces of evidence; mostly just quotes from other people. There are also chapters called “Hypothesis” that are basically conjectures on how certain things might have happened. However, a lot of these “Hypothesis” chapters often contradict one another. There are occasional comments, where the narrator speaks in the first person, talking about that he is like John Wade, fighting in Vietnam and visiting My …show more content…
During the Vietnam War, Americans were being told multiple, conflicting details about who and where the enemy could be found, and how the Vietnamese should be treated. After the horrific events like the My Lai Massacre, many American soldiers and commanders lied about their illegal involvement in the war, because of this American politicians gave a false account to the success and behavior of American soldiers. When reading In the Lake of the Woods, the reader can be said to experience a version of the moral problem of the American soldier in Vietnam. The reader must decide which components in the story are true and which are fiction; which parts are misdirecting and which parts should be perceived as true. But the author Tim O’Brien does not only describe Vietnam in this broken disorderly fashion; all of In the Lake of the Woods is written in this style. He is not just aiming for an intensified realism, but he also wants the readers to rethink the reading and authorship. For instance, at the end of the novel, the narrator and Tim O’Brien, being like the narrator, leaves the readers to decide what happened to John Wade and Kathy Wade. John might have run off with Kathy, keeping it a secret to everyone, or he might have killed her. Kathy might have committed suicide, or she might have left