Odenthal 1 

Zach Odenthal 

SEL 312 01 

Dr. Arnzen 

29 November 2018 

O’Brien’s Exaggeration of Reader Response Theory 

in T
​ he Lake of the Woods 

Literature is thought of being a wasp of stars smooshed together by a 

person with an urge to create a sky. But, literature is a flower that blooms from 

a person’s experiences. Those who write literature are those who have “felt the 

miraculous interestingness of the universe” (Bennett 10). Readers are then 

“awaken[ed]”by the author’s set of stars, its content, and builds the reader’s 

capacity for “pleasure,” “sympathy,” and “comprehension” by them drawing 

constellations from the author’s words (Bennett 11). Tim O’Brien is an author 

who is hyper-aware of this theory. T

​ im O’Brien’s I​ n the Lake of the Woods​, in 

itself, is a text written to prove the existence of reader response theory in a 

exaggerated manner through the mix up of author and narrator and the 

readers responsibility left from O’Brien’s structural “gap” techniques.  

O’brien explores the complicated line of being an author by using 

various point of view formats throughout the novel. Being an author is shining 

a flashlight in a dark forest to reveal something. Whether that be an 

elimination to get closer to the truth, or direct answers that get close to the 
 Odenthal 2 

truth. O’Brien confuses readers with his use of various “selves” or authors 

which alerts readers to his awareness of the reader response theory. A quick 

run down: the novel is set up with regular chapters written in third person 

point of view, then there are hypothesis chapters of some “author” predicting 

what could have happened, and finally there are chapters that are like evidence 

files with “author” footnotes written. With this mix, readers are never sure 

who is speaking. This is where the confusion lies as to who exactly is the “one 

that speaks to tell the work’s meaning” (Foucault 553).  

The normal chapters written in typical third person point of view style 

hold one level of authorship that tells or retells the happenings of the story. 

However, it is not written like someone spilling all of the details, it is written 

for thrilling entertainment. These chapters all begin in either an 

investigational statement like “how unhappy they were” or entitled with some 

theme of nature (O’Brien 1). There is a clear sense of creativity through these 

chapters as this “author” is weaving a story by one point talking about the 

night before Kathy disappeared, and then jumping to a political speech from a 

past time (O’Brien 157-158). This lines up a typical author that a reader is used 

to. Much like the typical third person chapters, the hypothesis chapters 

resemble them, acting as a combination of the creative author and the 

investigational or possibly fictitious author created by O’Brien. Ideas of 

“maybe this happened” are written out as tales by the c​ reative​ author at work.  
 Odenthal 3 

Then there are evidence chapters where quotes from various characters 

in the story, like John’s mom Eleanor K. Wade (O’Brien 197), are cited, or this 

“author”/narrator enlists from outside resources like Robert Parrish’s ​The 

Magician’s Handbook (​ O’Brien 96). The evidence excerpts are from “actual 

books” and others are “interview excerpts” from “fictional characters” 

created by the fictitious author (Grieve-Carlson 1). These collections of 

evidence manifest that there is an “author” trying to weave together a story, 

or trying to investigate this case-- O’Brien’s awareness of one’s role in 

literature. Therefore, there is an creative author and an investigative author. 

Another aspect of these chapters are the footnotes, which this investigative 

“author” uses first person pronouns that disclaim their authority of the work: 

“I have tried, of course, to be faithful to the evidence. Yet evidence is not truth. 

It is only evidence” (O’Brien 30). There is a wondering of, is this O’Brien 

speaking or is this a fictitious author created by O’Brien for the novel? 

It can be argued that at the end of the book, one of the evidences 

chapters shows the fictitious author is actually O’Brien due to referenced 

experiences much like O’Brien’s. For example, it is confessed that this novel is 

much from “my own experiences, I can understand how to keep things buried” 

(O’Brien 298). Then later in the footnote, it is professed that “maybe that is 

what this book if for. To remind me. To give me back my vanished life” 

(O’Brien 298). Knowing O’Brien himself was a veteran much like the character, 

John Wade, readers get insight that maybe these evidence files are the work of 
 Odenthal 4 

O’Brien as an author trying to formulate the creative story in the typical third 

person chapters. Perhaps, O’Brien was laying out what it means to be an 

author, by showing readers the “truth” of how an author formulates their 

work-- through personal experience and clumps of “evidence” or ideas. 

Though no amount of evidence is “sufficient to destabilize that certainty” of 

authorial authority, I argue that the narrator of the novel is not O’Brien, but a 

fictional author O’Brien creates to lend a hand to the reading through the lens 

of reader response theory (Grieve-Carlson 8). 

By O’Brien’s narrative/fictional author existing, O’Brien calls the theory 

of reader response to the reader’s mind. O’brien tells readers that there is not a 

textual, or factual answer given by the text. This leaves gaps for the reader to 

fill in. The stars are fixed by the author, in a way that is almosted “entranced 

by the power of language to create a magic show of the imagination” (O'Brien 

“The Magic Show” 177). The reader sees the constellations that are revealed to 

them because of their own personal experiences. O’Brien provides a fixed set of 

stars that the reader actively filters through the exaggerated gaps of the text, 

revealing constellations to make meaning.  

According to the reader response theory, the reader is constantly 

involved in a dynamic process of konkretisation, to make meaning or even an 

illusion of what they think the meaning is, because of what is revealed at the 

time, or what that reader has experienced at the time. In this case, the timing 

of a reading plays just as much importance as the text itself. The meanings 
 Odenthal 5 

change from person to person. The meaning changes from time to time. The 

reader constantly is filtering relations of content through their past, present, 

and future, which ultimately formulates the meaning of the text, revealing 

“potential multiplicity of connections” (Iser 192). Reading is a creative process 

in this sense, as different readers devise different meanings because of this 

personal filter. The text remains as “ink spots on paper” until the reader 

fulfills their “crucial” role (Woodruff and Griffin 111). O’Brien’s novel 

exaggerates this theory because of the accelerated expectation of the reader 

interacting with O’Brien’s structure and O’Brien’s characterization of an 

author. 

O’Brien’s novel is structured in a way the forces readers to consistently 

develop the timeline of the story, but also to piece evidence together to make 

an attempt in solving an investigation. The gaps must be filled; the reader 

must breath life into the text (Woodruff and Griffin 111). As O'Brien reveals in 

his article “The Magic Show,” a good plot does not give it all away ( 180). 

Therefore, all writing is an “act of faith” that is supposed to “shine light into 

the darkness of the great human mysteries” (O'Brien “The Magic Show” 177). 

O’Brien writes, “If you require solutions, you will have to look beyond these 

pages” in his novel (30). Even just in this statement, O’Brien reveals that the 

fictional author and himself as the author of the author are ​forcing​ readers to 

be active by laying out ideas, not answers. All while doing this, the reader is 
 Odenthal 6 

also filtering it all through their own unconscious, developing an illusionary 

gestalt that resides in a virtual dimension of meaning.  

It is important to realize that there is an “unrepeatability” in the 

“innovative reading” process, as the same response can never be recreated, as 

perceptions from the readings mind or from reader to reader are never the 

same (Iser 194). There is not a definitive answer. All meaning is 

indeterminative because of the unwritten gaps the readers are actively filling 

in. O’Brien’s novel gives readers exaggerated gaps, that leave a lot of loose 

ends for the readers to attempt to knot up.These gaps let readers develop and, 

even I dare say, construct the story. The stars are not transmitting a signal to 

draw out the constellation, the viewers of the stars are connecting the dots, in 

whatever way they are able to see them. O’Brien creates this metafiction in 

which both the author of the book and O’Brien (the author of the author) are 

hyper-aware of their roles in this process. They both realize that their job is 

not to give the answers, but to set the stars for the reader to connect the dots 

and construct the meaning.  

 
 Odenthal 7 

Work Cited 

Bennett, Arnold. L
​ iterary Taste: How to Form It​. CreateSpace, 1938. 

Foucault, Michael. “What is an Author.” M

​ odern Criticism and Theory: a Reader​.  

Edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, Pearson Longman, 2008. 

Grieve-Carlson, Gary.“Telling the Truth about History Tim O’Brien’s In the  

Lake of the Woods.” ​War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of 

the Humanities​, vol. 29, Jan. 2017, pp. 1–14. ​EBSCOhost​, 

setonhill.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx

?direct=true&db=afh&AN=125594131&site=ehost-live​. 

Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” ​New  

Literary History​, vol. 3, no. 2, 1972, pp. 279–299. ​JSTOR​, JSTOR, 

www.jstor.org/stable/468316​. 

O’Brien, Tim. ​In the Lake of the Woods​. First Mariner Books, 2006. 

O'Brien, Tim, et al. “The Magic Show.” W

​ riters on Writing​, University Press of  

New England, 1991, pp. 175–183. 

 Odenthal 8 

Woodruff, Amanda H., and Robert A. Griffin. “Reader Response in Secondary  

Settings: Increasing Comprehension through Meaningful Interactions 

with Literary Texts.” ​Texas Journal of Literacy Education​, vol. 5, no. 2, Jan. 

2017, pp. 108–116. E

​ BSCOhost​, 

setonhill.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx

?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1162670&site=ehost-live​.