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Madeleine Robbins

Dr. Arnzen

SEL 312 Literary Criticism

8 May 2017

Magic, Trauma and Repression: Core Issues in In the Lake of the Woods

In Tim OBriens novel In the Lake of the Woods, John Wades psychological state

determines the course of events and the hypotheses that strive to explain his wifes

disappearance. His repression of psychologically disruptive childhood experiences and of trauma

as a soldier in Vietnam generates his cyclic core issues fear of abandonment and fear of

intimacy that produce violent tendencies and destructive behaviors. Though he uses magic to

maintain illusions of control, the traumas of Vietnam and the senate election compound his

childhood trauma, causing his core issues spin out of control and unravel his psyche.

Wades fear of abandonment, the unshakable belief that our friends and loved ones are

going to desert us or dont really care about us (Tyson 16), originates in his troubled childhood

relationship with his father, characterized by teasing and alcoholism (OBrien 10). The

narrator reports, More than anything else John Wade wanted to be loved (208), but Mr.

Wades alcoholism encouraged a negative father-son relationship. Johns father criticized John

incessantly for his weight: [W]hen John got a little chubby, his father used to call him Jiggling

John. It was supposed to be funny (67), but John only wanted to make his father proud (208).

When John wrote away for a special diet hed seen advertised, his father didnt smile. He

didnt act proud (208), so John was denied affirmation that his father cared for him. More

teasing about Johns magic hobby That pansy magic crap . . . Blubby little pansy (67)

compounded the remarks about Johns weight. His father, who should be a primary source of
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parental support and affection, withheld love and fortified in John a sense of emotional

abandonment.

Emotional abandonment escalates to physical abandonment when Johns father hang[s]

himself (194). Though the narrator admits that evidence is not truth (30), an evidence chapter

quotes an essay titled, Young Children: Disenfranchised Grievers saying that children often

believe the death of a parent is deliberate abandonment (qtd. in OBrien 197), ostensibly

because Johns father did not love him enough to resist death. Articulating the emotional trauma

of Mr. Wades suicide, Timothy Melley explains, When Mr. Wade finally hangs himself in the

garage, John is left, at fourteen, with no way to obtain his fathers approval (116). Johns

inability to win favor, love and affection becomes obsessive through the practice of magic tricks,

where John finds some authority over his own life (208). Even before his fathers death, magic

provides power for John that enables him to psychologically conquer his father (71). In a scene

in which John and his father visit a store of magic tricks, the narrator remarks on the masculinity

and implied physical power of Mr. Wade, a tall, solid-looking man . . . [with] an athletes

sloping shoulders (70). The placement of his forearm, huge and meaty in the guillotine collar,

serves as a castration symbol that demonstrates Johns use of magic to reduce his fathers

supremacy (70). Johns fear of abandonment, made very real by his fathers emotional

manipulation and suicide, create an intense desire for love and approval. The course of his life

became [o]nly for love. Only to be loved . . . Sometimes he hated himself for needing love so

badly (60).

With no way to obtain his fathers approval (Melley 116) and resolve the fear of

abandonment, Wade represses the memories, expunging from consciousness . . . these unhappy

psychological events (Tyson 12). Wades repression, however, creates a violent tendency that
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motivates destructive behavior: What John felt th[e] night [of his fathers suicide], and for many

nights afterward, was the desire to kill. At the funeral he wanted to kill everybody who was

crying and everybody who wasnt. He wanted to . . . kill his father for dying. But he was

helpless. He didnt know where to start (14). With no psychological strategy to process his

traumatic relationship and experience, Wade dwells in violent feelings and adopts a

psychologically disruptive mental habit that encourages further repression. He would

sometimes invent elaborate stories about how he couldve saved his father. He imagined all the

things he couldve done . . . It was only a game, or a way of coping (15). Affirming Johns fear

of abandonment and its connection to his fathers death, the same passage states that sometimes

hed get lucky . . . Hed bend down and pick up his father and put him in his pocket and be

careful never to lose him again (15). In his imagination, where he represses traumatic realities,

John seemingly regains control of his thoughts and mental processes.

Though he maintains an illusion of order and normality in his mind, Wades repressed

experiences are powerful subconscious motivations that lead to destructive behavior. Before his

fathers death, Wade used spying to ma[ke] things better . . . It was a bond. It was something

they shared, something intimate and loving (209-10). A result of the fear of abandonment, this

secretive, unhealthy behavior follows Wade through to his young-adult relationship and later

married life with Kathy. The narrative solidifies the connection between Wades fear of losing

his father to his fear of losing Kathy when it says, hed jerk awake at night, dreaming shed left

him . . . He was picturing his fathers big white casket (32). Because Wade experienced

emotional and physical abandonment from his father, he is unconsciously driven in his

relationship with Kathy to seek the love he was denied and to avoid the abandonment that causes

psychological pain. He repeats his habit of spying with Kathy, thinking of it [l]ike magic . . . a
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quick, powerful rush. He knew things he shouldnt know. Intimate little items (32). Spying in

childhood becomes voyeurism in adulthood, but in both settings, the behavior is a control fantasy

fueled by the urgency that came from fear (32). Obsession with magic intensifies his fantasy:

He substituted the real world, where he could not control other people and their affection, for the

world of magic, where miracles happened . . . [and he] had sovereignty over the world (65). At

the focal point of his complex feelings, motivations and behaviors is the relationship with and

death of his father. Instead of dealing with the grief of physical and emotional abandonment, he

repressed these experiences and [gave] them force by making them the organizers [of] current

experiences (Tyson 12). Through repression, fear of abandonment becomes one of Wades core

issues throughout adolescence and adulthood.

Throughout the novel, the narrator explains Wades feelings for Kathy from periods early

in their relationship and in more recent times. From these snapshots, Wades physical, possessive

love for Kathy is clear: Such eyes, hed think. Hed want to suck them from their sockets. Hed

want to feel their weight on his tongue, taste the whites, roll them around like lemon drops (71).

Using womb imagery, the narrative suggests that Wades desire for Kathy is aimed at

compensation for parental abandonment. There were times when John Wade wanted to open up

Kathys belly and crawl inside and stay there forever (71). Despite his frantic love for Kathy,

Wades psyche is also controlled by a fear of intimacy with her. This overpowering feeling that

emotional closeness will seriously hurt or destroy us functions as a defense against the fear of

abandonment (Tyson 16). Wade avoids closeness to Kathy because he does now want to gain

that which he fears he will lose. The novel illustrates their emotional distance through snippets of

closed conversation and limited interaction. On one day during their stay at the cabin in Lake of

the Woods, Kathy finally broke a days silence: Hey there, she said, you all right? Perfect,
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he said. You dont seem No, Im perfect. Kathys eyes traveled away again . . . There was

some unfilled time before she said, John? Oh, Christ, he said. He would remember a

movement at her jaw, a locking motion (18). Conversation reveals their emotional distance, but

the narrative discloses on the first page of the novel that their relationship lacked physical

intimacy, too. They were not yet prepared to make love. They had tried once, but it had not

gone well (1). There is some inclination in Wade to reconnect with her, to confess to the

shame he felt . . . the special burden of villainy, ghosts at Thuan Yen, the strain on his dreams,

(51), but Wade fails to overcome his fear of intimacy before Kathy disappears.

The fear of abandonment urges Wade to frantically pursue Kathy, but it also creates a

fear of intimacy with her. The interconnected relationship between his core issues evokes the

ouroboros image in the novel, that pair of snakes along the trail near Pinkville . . . swallowing

each other up (76). The reciprocal, unresolved contradictions in Wades psyche stir and muddle

his sense of self. His cyclical trauma and core issues splinter his identity, making his

psychological state more precarious as these problems go unsolved and repression continues. In

an essay on psychological trauma, Kowalczuk asserts that in OBriens novel, [t]he abortive, yet

reiterated, act [of repression] aims at banishing the sudden, devastating otherness that sets him

apart and engenders a division of his self (Kowalczuk 3). Wades damaging psychological

experiences, both in childhood and in Vietnam, must be repressed to avoid otherness that sets

him apart, but such repression divides Wades sense of identity. The narrator affirms this in the

scene where Wade waits for Kathy in an abortion clinic. Wade

looked up to see his own image reflected on the clinics walls and ceiling. Fun-

house reflections: deformations and odd angles. He was a little boy doing magic.

He was a college spy, madly in love. He saw a soldier and a husband and a seeker
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of public office. He saw himself from inside out and upside down, the organic

chemistry, the twisted chromosomes, and for a second it occurred to him that his

own stability was at issue. (156)

When Wade repressed his childhood experiences and developed two strong core issues, he

created a cyclical and destructive identity problem. His fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy

fragment his identity when they create conflicting motivations and desires.

Wades experiences in Vietnam release and galvanize these core issues. He represses

memories of the thorough and systematic [killing] . . . people were shot dead and carved up

with knives and raped and sodomized and bayoneted and blown into scraps. The bodies lay in

piles (200). For the sake of his political career, he keeps those experiences a secret from the

public - Doesnt say anything about the Vietnam shit not to his wife or me or anybody, Tony

Carbo says (196) but repression is necessary for his own psychological security in response to

extreme trauma. His defenses, or processes by which he maintains psychological stability, are

denial and selective memory. Immediately after the massacre at Thuan Yen, Wade reasons, This

could not have happened. Therefore it did not. Already he felt better (109). His selective

memory, where he gave himself over to forgetfulness (108), becomes concrete when he erases

himself from the companys records. Within the mind of the same man, the traumas of childhood

and the horror of war engage the same psychological issues. Melley remarks, OBrien so tightly

interweaves [his] early trauma with the trauma of war that they soon become inseparable (117).

According to Melley, this interweaving occurs in the connection of Wades violent tendencies.

On his first night home from Vietnam,

he found himself curled up on the floor, wide awake, conversing with the dark.

He was asking his father to please stop dying . . . and then he curled up tighter and
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stared into the dark and found himself at his fathers funeral fourteen years old .

. . expect the funeral was being conducted in bright sunlight along an irrigation

ditch in Thuan Yen . . . John wanted to kill everybody . . . he wanted to grab a

hammer and scramble down into the ditch and kill his father for dying. (42)

The violent response to traumas connects over the lost election. Having perched himself

precariously on hopes for success and acceptance in the political sphere, Wade crashes

psychologically after the defeat. He felt crazy sometimes, real depravity. Late at night an

electric sizzle came into his blood, a tight pumped-up killing rage, and he couldnt keep it in and

he couldnt let it out. He wanted to hurt things. Grab a knife and start slashing and never stop

(5). Wades fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy, released by trauma in Vietnam and the

pressures of politics, crash together at the cabin in Lake of the Woods. Wade loses his sense of

self in the destructive chaos of repression, core issues and violence.

Seeking control amid psychological disorder, Wade clung to magic throughout his life.

Through Wades increasingly obsessive magic hobby, OBrien opens the novel beyond

characters to critique war and politics. As a force that supposedly grants Wade sovereignty over

the world (65), magic is a fantasy of control and wish fulfillment. In Vietnam, Wade is known

as Sorcerer among his company, and he makes himself vanish from records after the My Lai

massacre. OBrien critiques the elusive, magical, destructive nature of war through its

psychological damage in John Wade. Likewise when Wade returns, he uses magic to make

[Kathy] love him and never stop (32), and for a time, [a]ll the tricks were working (149). The

most precarious trick of his life is his candidacy for Minnesota senator where he, like all

politicians, asks for the faith of the people. But the audience sees behind the curtain when the

truth of Wades involvement in Thuan Yen becomes public. His longing to be loved by
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becoming a soldier, by pursuing Kathy, and by running for Senate is wholly rejected in the loss

of the election, and this contact with his sensitive fear of abandonment sends his core issues into

overdrive. With the failure of his grand tricks, Wades psyche unravels as the couple arrives to

the cabin in Lake of the Woods.

Wades escape at the end of the novel brings no resolution to his psychological state.

Even as he enters the open waters in the north, he could not stop returning. All night long he

revisited the village of Thuan Yen, always with a fresh eye . . . [the] citizens were never quite

dead, otherwise they would surely stop dying. Same-same for his father. Proof of the loop. His

father kept hanging himself (283). The ouroboros arises as a reminder that Wade has no

terminus, and likewise the novel itself does not reach clarity. In The Idea of Psychoanalytic

Criticism, Brooks observes, The structure of literature is in some sense the structure of mind

(24). Both Wades mind and the narrators compilation of story, hypotheses and evidence have

no precision, conclusion or certainty of reality. The novels lack of conclusion reflects Wades

inability to process the [p]ure wrongness, the things unnatural (105) that he repressed. His

cyclical core issues originate in childhood, bur are compounded and released by later trauma,

reinforcing destructive behaviors and psychological damage.

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WORKS CITED

Brooks, Peter. The Idea of Psychoanalytic Criticism. Psychoanalysis and Storytelling,

Blackwell, 1994, pp. 21-45.

Kowalczuk, Barbara. "My Lai's Fucking Flies!: The Stigmata of Trauma in Tim O'Brien's in

the Lake of the Woods." War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the

Humanities, vol. 26, 2014. EBSCOhost.

Melley, Timothy. "Postmodern Amnesia: Trauma and Forgetting in Tim O'Brien's in the Lake of

the Woods." Contemporary Literature, vol. 44, no. 1, 2003, pp. 106-131. EBSCOhost.

OBrien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. New York, Routledge, 2015.