Is The Church-Patrick In Tim O Brien's In The Lake Of The Woods

In the Lake of the Woods. John is a failed politician, psychotic and love-obsessed husband, and an extremely emotionally scarred Vietnam War veteran. All of the aforementioned factors contribute to not only his sharply declined mental health and sanity, but also his strained relationship with his wife, Kathy. John Wade's psychopathic tendencies that were

It comes to conclusion that who you are depends on where and who you are with. As the French usually say “ you are three people at once. First, you are the person that you think you are. Second, you are the person that people think you are. Third, you are the person that you really

In the Lake of the Woods is a fictional mystery written by Tim O'Brien. Through the book we learn that our lovers, husbands, and wives have qualities beyond what our eyes can see. John Wade and Kathy are in a marriage so obscure that their secrets lead to an emotional downfall. After John Wade loss in his Senatorial Campaign, his feeling towards Kathy take on a whole different outlook. His compulsive and obsessive behavior causes Kathy to distance herself from him. His war experience and emotional trauma are a major cause for his strange behavior. We remain pondering about Kathy's mysterious disappearance, which becomes fatal for her. Possible scenarios are presented in eight

There is no denying that every person needs ti have a persona. One’s personality is developed through the different environments, cultures, and even obstacles faced in order to create the type of person we are. When going through the process of finding our identities, we are faced with aspects of ourselves that we do not wish to be defined as. According to the author, Jennifer M. Volland “Stay: The Archetypal Space of the Hotel,” she emphasizes psychologist Carl Jung’s idea that we each have two sides to ourselves that we are either accepting or unaccepting as she states, “the ‘persona’ which is the outward appearance a person presents to the world, and the ‘shadow,’ the subconscious aspects of that person’s personality — that is, the denied parts of one’s self.” We are able to see parallels of Jung’s argument of what are the components of a person’s identity throughout David Wallace’s work, “Shipping Out,” of how the cruise ship internally exploits workers and manipulates their passengers while externally trying to maintain a facade of what the Zenith stands for.

“In Defense of Masks”, by Kenneth Gergen regards that it is not possible for humans to adequately find a coherent self identity without an aftermath. Gergen states, “to the extent that they do, they many experience severe emotional distress” when trying to do so (172). He refers to Erik Erickson, a psychologist who speaks about how self-alienation can result due to the pressures of society to individuals with various masks of identity.

Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods is centered around the mysterious disappearance of Kathy Wade. Mysterious is the key word, as throughout the novel O’Brien plays with the fine line between ambiguity and reality. Kathy’s husband John Wade, the main character, is a Vietnam veteran and former politician whose participation in the infamous Mai Lai Massacre caused his fall from grace. Following a landslide defeat in the congressional elections, Kathy and John retreat to solitude in an isolated cabin in the Minnesota woods. Here, O’Brien highlights the stress that secrecy has had on their relationship. During their retreat, Kathy disappears in the middle of the night. Their boat is missing, but there are no other clues. O’Brien does

mystery and remained an enigmatic piece of literature even in its conclusion. The point-of-view, plot, and figurative language developed by O’Brien were critical in maintaining the mystery as consistently and effectively as was evident in, In the Lake of the Woods. The main character, John Wade, believed he was a magician from early childhood and throughout his development into adulthood. He was the ultimate magician both personally and in his perception of his vocations of soldier and politician.

In the Lake of the Woods is about ghosts, personal and national, and about the impossibility of escaping them. Author Tim O’Brien poured much of his own likeness into protagonist John Wade. Wade grew up in Minnesota and like O’Brien, he served in Vietnam so he could maintain or get more love from his peers and family. Like O’Brien, he likely committed some wartime sins and like O’Brien, he cannot escape the past. However we see a key difference between the two mean as O’Brien confronts his personal demons through writing and admitting publicly his faults, while Wade prefers to suppress the past and at making all disagreeable memories disappear.

There are many factors that shape us into who we are, and who we will become. Some of these factors we can control, while others we cannot. While we are born into many traits of our identities, much of our other behavior is learned. My identity, for example, is “based not only on responses to the question ‘Who am I?’ but also on responses to the question ‘Who am I in relation to others?’” (Allen, 2011, p. 11). My identity and the question of who I am, are both influenced by many aspects of my life, including my hometown, my family, my friends, and my beliefs and moral values.

What do you think the origins of these false selves may be? (Remember the discussion of the ?primal wounds? we often receive when we are young? or sometimes not so young).

Who I am? Personally, I believe that a person’s identity can take only one of two routes. One, a person’s identity can change within that person’s life. Who I am now, is not necessarily who I was when I was younger. Experience can and will likely modify our identities. Therefore, experience can solidify our personal identification or it can weaken our personal identification. And as such, individuals and their perspectives are always evolving, or at the very least, they should evolve over time. Although there are some identities that evolve throughout one’s lifetime; there are some identities that remain consistent. Two, some identities cannot and will not change. So identities are socially and/or politically forces upon you, some identities are genetically assigned to you, and some you choose to keep. No matter the reason or reasons, these identities have been and will be consist within your lifespan. But, how you deal with them is up to you as an individual.

As humans, do we consciously form our own identities? After all, one is rarely who they aspire to be. Take, for example, John Gardner’s character Grendel. Although Grendel seems to intentionally perpetuate his wretched state of being, it is also clear that this process creates, or is the product of some sort of internal struggle between what he considers to be the “two dark realities, the self and the world” (Gardner 47). For many individuals, including Grendel, existence appears to be nothing more than a never-ending series of conflicts, mostly between the actual state of things and our idealistic perception of what they should be. These conflicts, whether realized or not, generate a great deal of emotional and psychological turmoil. This idea is present in nearly every religion and school of philosophy and has been given many names throughout history, but the more recent technical term for this flaw in human thought is “cognitive dissonance”.

Therefore one’s public and private personas are two parts that make one’s single identity complete, however it often causes great conflict within oneself because the lines often become blurred.

Who am I? What is my place in the world? What do I want to do with my life? These are some of the most fundamental if not somewhat cliche questions that we as humans ask ourselves. From the moment of birth, we begin on our long journey toward not only discovering the world around us but also discovering ourselves. Although the journey of self-discovery is lifelong, most developmentalists agree that it is during the adolescent years that we seriously begin to consider the question of who am I? One of the most famous people to describe

The title of the section in Parker Palmers book, “Let Your Life Speak”, that speaks to his personal journey towards vocation entitled “Now I Become Myself” really spoke to me. Throughout this chapter(s) he examines his personal journey towards self discovery. I journey, I have realized I myself am on. When I thought about what I would tell my family when I stepped off the plane, as I was driving to Dallas, I realized that I would have to fit the person I am to fill the place where the person I was fit so comfortably. Like Palmer moving to the monastery, my moving to college was “like moving to Mars- utterly alien but profoundly compelling” (Palmer 23). I have become a