In the Lake of the Woods Literary Elements

Mystery novel

The action takes place at the Lake in the Woods, Vietnam and Minnesota.

The story is related form a third person omniscient narrative.

Tragic, violent, passionate

The protagonist is Kathy and the narrator suggests that the antagonist is John.

The major conflict is an interior conflict and it is between John’s violent tendencies and his love for Kathy.

The story reaches its climax when John decides to go alone and look for Kathy.

In chapter 4, John admits that he felt as though electricity was passing through him on throughout the day before Kathy’s disappearance. This foreshadows the events that will take place later on in the story.

When Kathy tells John that they will be able to get over everything bad it proves to be an understatement as Kathy ends up disappearing and it is hinted that the reason why she disappeared was John’s erratic behavior.

The narrator alludes the idea that war affects a person more than it lets it to be seen from the outside. Apart from the possible physical wounds, a person’s psychological wellbeing may be affected as well and those types of changes would have not been visible. He even goes as far as suggesting that a person loses his morality in the war and is no longer able to distinguish right from wrong. For a while after returning, that soldier remains a soldier on the battlefield, interested only in his survival.

In the 16th chapter, the soldiers talk about what happened at My Lai and about the atrocities they had to endure. What soldiers in particular paints a gruesome picture when he describes the massacre. He tells the Martial Court that one of their superior told them to kill a group of unarmed women and children. The soldiers began shooting and pieces of flesh broke off the people who were shot and were flying into the air. The knowledge that those who were shoot were just innocent people who posed a threat to the American soldiers makes the event seem even more traumatic and inhumane.

The behavior of the soldiers who took part in the massacre at My Lai is paradoxical because they continued to claim that there were not guilty of killing the villagers even though they were the ones who pushed the trigger. In this way, they keep their conscious clean even though they committed hideous crimes.

The author draws a parallel between a losing politician and a soldier who returned from the battlefield recently. Both men behave in the same way, that is they are more willing to take risks. The author argues that after investing a lot of time, effort and psychological energy, a man becomes unable to distinguish right from wrong. Because of this, they are more vulnerable and likely to act in an improper way.

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In chapter 13, "John Wade would remember Thuan Yen the way chemical nightmares are remembered, impossible combinations, impossible events, and over time the impossibility itself would become the richest and deepest and most profound memory.’’