Please discuss questions 1-4 with a partner and post your responses on the blog!
Discussion Questions
In the Lake of the Woods
1. Almost from this novel's first page we know that Kathy Wade will vanish, and it is not long before we discover that her disappearance will remain unsolved. What, then, gives In the Lake of the Woodsits undeniable suspense? What does it offer in place of the revelations of traditional mysteries?2. Instead of a linear narrative, in which action unfolds chronologically, Tim O'Brien has constructed a narrative that simultaneously moves forward and backward in time: forward from John and Kathy's arrival at the cabin; backward into John's childhood, and beyond that to Little Big Horn and the War of Independence. It also moves laterally, into the "virtual" time that is represented by different hypotheses about Kathy's fate. What does the author accomplish with this narrative scheme? In what ways are his different narrative strands connected?
3. What does O'Brien accomplish in the sections titled "Evidence"? What information do these passages impart that is absent from the straightforward narrative? How do they alter or deepen our understanding of John as a magician, a politician, a husband, and a soldier who committed atrocities in wartime? What connections do they forge between his private tragedy and the pathologies of our public life and history? Does the testimony of (or about) such "real" people as Richard Nixon, William Calley, or George Custer lend greater verisimilitude to John's story or remind us that it--and John himself--are artifices?
4. Who is the narrator who addresses us in the "Evidence" sections? Are we meant to see him as a surrogate for the author, who also served in Vietnam and revisited Thuan Yen many years after the massacre? (See Tim O'Brien, "The Vietnam in Me," in The New York Times Magazine, October 3, 1994, pp. 48-57.) In what ways does O'Brien's use of this narrator further explode the conventions of the traditional novel?
5. One of the few things that we know for certain about John is that he loves Kathy. But what does John mean by love? How do John's feelings for his wife resemble his hopeless yearning for his father, who had a similar habit of vanishing? In what circumstances does John say "I love you"? What vision of love is suggested by his metaphor of two snakes devouring each other? Why might Kathy have fallen in love with John?
6. Although it is easy to see Kathy as the victim of John's deceptions, the author at times suggests that she may be more conscious (and therefore more complex) than she first appears. We learn, for example, that Kathy has always known about John's spying and even referred to him as "Inspector Clouseau," an ironic counterpoint to John's vision of himself as "Sorcerer." At a critical moment she rebuffs her husband's attempt at a confession. And in the final section of "Evidence," we get hints that Kathy may have planned her own disappearance. Are we meant to see Kathy as John's victim or as his accomplice, like a beautiful assistant vanishing inside a magician's cabinet?
7. Why might John have entered politics? Is he merely a cynical operator with no interest in anything but winning? Or, as Tony Carbo suggests, might John be trying to atone for his actions in Vietnam? Why might the author have chosen to leave John's political convictions a blank?
8. John's response to the horrors of Thuan Yen is to deny them: "This could not have happened. Therefore it did not." Where else in the novel does he perform this trick? How does John's way of coping with the massacre compare to the psychic strategies adopted by William Calley or Paul Meadlo? Do any of O'Brien's characters seems capable of acknowledging terrible truths directly? How does In the Lake of the Woods treat the matter of individual responsibility for evil?
9. Each of this novel's hypotheses about events at the cabin begins with speculation but gradually comes to resemble certainty. The narrator suggests that John and Kathy Wade are ultimately unknowable, as well; that any attempt to "penetrate...those leaden walls that encase the human spirit" can never be anything but provisional. Seen in this light, In the Lake of the Woods comes to resemble a magician's trick, in which every assertion turns out to be only another speculation. Given the information we receive, does any hypothesis about what happened at Lake of the Woods seem more plausible than the others? With what certainties, if any, does this novel leave us?
1. I think that the rapid fire of open-ended hypotheses gives "In the Lake of the Woods"undeniable suspense,it makes the reader frustrated and biting their nails trying to figure out what will happen and what did happen.
ReplyDelete2. The way the narrator tells the story simultaneously forward and backward in time lets the reader connect the dots or maybe further there assumptions and hypotheses suggested by O'Brien.
3. What O'Brien does in his Evidence sections is develop his story, characters and offers multiple point of views so that the reader has a better understanding about John. O' Brien really makes you the detective and wants you to figure out these mysteries, it's kind of like a low key interactive Goosebumps book, like when you read a section and on the bottom of the page there's these decisions and what ever you choose you go on the page number it tells you to, and if you pick a bad one it leads you to a dead end.
4. I don't know.
Ben Zuegel: I answered all the questions, but instead of hitting publish I clicked sign out, so it all got erased. In question 1, I talked about how in this book the characters become the main mysteries, rather than the plot. In question 2 I talked about how the non-linear structure lets the author fill in specific things about each character without getting side tracked and distracted from the main point. Question three was a lot about the reliability of the "evidence" that's presented to us, and question four I moved on to question how reliable even the author is.
ReplyDeleteNathan Pembrook and Ethan Gresko
ReplyDelete1. The undeniable suspense of In the Lake of the Woods comes from the question of how Kathy Wade disappeared rather than will she disappear. It offers a different kind of suspense that is in a way more intense than just the question of will she because there could be many theories as to how that entices the reader much more than just will she, which would be answered in one finalized way, for instance, "In early November he started spying on her." gives one possible explanation for her disappearance, but it doesn't give a sure answer to the question, allowing O'Brien to incorporate suspense later in the novel.
2. Tim O'Brien accomplishes a sense of suspense and suggests to the reader events that will unfold int he future. All the narrative strands link to possible explanations of the Kathy's disappearance, "What happened, maybe, was that Kathy drowned. Something freakish: a boating accident. Maybe a sandbar."
3. O'Brien accomplishes a great deal regarding
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Imani M., Imani G., Jahni, Shay
ReplyDelete1. The thing that leaves us in undeniable suspense is that we meet Kathy as a missing person instead of a regular person. we have no idea what has happened to her. He gives us hints of what could have led to her disappearance. Mystery is all about suspense and not knowing what has happened until the end.
2. The way Tim O'Brien uses non-linear narration he accomplishes a lot of things. He takes his readers on an adventure that is hard for the reader to walk away. They're connected through the way they all know Kathy.
3. O'Brien gives us evidence and hints about her disappearance. It gives us information about the crime and all the speculations about different scenarios pertaining Cathy's death. These bits of information alter our understanding by
1. The suspense of "In the Lake of the Woods" comes not revelations in the plot, but rather revelations into the psychological state of the protagonist John Wade. We know that Kathy disappeared, but we don't know how or why, and we don't know what role John played in the disappearance. For instance, one of the most suspenseful parts of the book is the description of Johns behavior the night of the disappearance: "At one point during the night he stood waist-deep in the lake. At another point he found himself completely submerged, lungs like stone, an underwater rush in his ears" (51). Because John himself doesn't even know what happened that night, finding out what happened is even more enticing to the reader.
ReplyDelete2. Jumping between the past, present, hypothesis, and evidence keeps the reader awake and interested. It makes it seem less like the narrator is telling a story, and more like he is offering different versions of what could have happened, and then providing some context for his theories by describing the past. For example, the theory that John killed her seems plausible given his background of stalking her, as well as his uncontrollable anger, which is evidenced by him killing his friend PFC Weatherby.
3. The evidence section shows other sides of John Wade not presented in the accounts of John's life past and present. It gives the perspective of people other than the narrator. For example, we learn that John's mother thinks that John was a good man, despite his anger issues, and that he would never be capable of hurting Kathy. Kathy's sister, however, is very suspicious of John, and thinks that he may of been capable of hurting Kathy, "My sister seemed almost scared of him sometimes. I remember this one time when Kathy...Look, I don't think it's something we should talk about" (26). The "evidence" given by real people blurs the line between the story and reality. They don't always strictly have to do with the story, (Nixon's "My mother was a saint" (29) for example) but they give some insight into the nature of humans, and how this might relate to John's behavior the night of the disappearance.
4. The narrator of the novel is a reporter researching for his book about the disappearance of Kathy Wade. The reporter is a little cynical and kind of obsessive. He's a bit like John Wade in this sense. He tells the reader that "Evidence is not truth. It is only evident. In any case, Kathy Wade is forever missing, and if you require solutions, you will have to look beyond these pages" (30). The narrator is a bit like Tim O'Brien too, in that he wants the reader to question things presented as "evidence." All accounts have a certain perspective and bias, and both the narrator and O'Brien are trying to get readers to focus on this,m rather than just accepting what they are told as facts.
3. In the Evidence sections O'Brien gives us another view of John, as well as presenting possibilities that create multiple questions adding to the suspense. How many possibilities there are and how aggressive John can be at any given moment. They give us some glimpses into the horrors of his life and show why he became the person he is. They make a connection between John's tragedies and his public life, they show cause and effect. It does give his story greater verisimilitude because it compares to other people who were in similar situations, atrocities committed and the falling out of those, and shows the many different ways they can be handled.
ReplyDelete4. The narrator of the Evidence sections is a reporter who can be seen as a surrogate for the author for two reasons, one because he wants his readers to examine all the possibilities and make their own decision, and someone who actually did experience the things that occurred in Vietnam. Using a narrator like this further breaks from tradition because it is rare to that there is a narrator with a part in the story during one part and during another there is a third person omniscient voice.