Lake of the Woods
...es leading up to the tragedy at the lake. As a child, John Wade was a confused, lonely child who craved his alcoholic father’s love and approval. He escaped in the world of magic and illusion as an escape from the reality of an imperfect relationship with his father. When he became heavy as a pre-teenager, his father’s snide remarks about his weight deeply wounded Wade, and added to his insecurity and low self-esteem. His father’s suicide by hanging was horribly traumatic for the child, and left him forever trying to somehow obtain his father’s unconditional love, even posthumously. He would escape the reality of his father’s death, by holding imaginary conversations with him, and believed he could find his father if he just looked hard enough. This theme is repeated in the way that he believes he can find Kathy if he just looks hard enough. John achieves a little acceptance from his peers as a teenager once he begins to perform some of his magic tricks for them. He builds upon this platform of illusion to develop other relationships in his life. When he begins dating Kathy he has trouble really believing that someone could truly love him for himself. His low self-esteem and doubts that anyone could be true to him cause him to sneak around spying on Kathy when she wasn’t with him. He continues this behavior throughout their relationship. The unsettling thing about this, aside from how spooky the spying is, is that there are several allusions made to the fact that Kathy seems aware of the surveillance and just puts up with it. This makes them both seem to deviant from normal behavior. Kathy indeed must have self-esteem issues of her own to go along with so many of John’s unusually controlling and possessive actions. John’s grip on reality is pushed to the limit when he is in Vietnam. He escapes back into his old pattern of impressing people with his magic and illusions to gain acceptance and stature with his peers. His illusion of having special powers earns him the nickname of Sorcerer, which is a great source of pride to him. He thrives on building this fragile illusion of power. He learns soon enough that his magic tricks cannot really protect himself or his comrades from the tragedies of war. John is deployed to the mission off scouting the village of My Lai for enemy snipers and weapons, and ends up reluctantly witnessing the brutal massacre of over 500 innocent women, children, and elderly villagers. He kills an old farmer carrying a rake near the end of the fracas, when his nerves are stretched beyond the point of sanity. He then ends up cowering in a ditch with victims of the massacre. As a face appears over the edge of the ditch, he shoots and kills one of his own Charlie Company soldiers. He never owns up to this murder, allowing others to believe the Viet Cong killed him. Over time, John tried to bury the reality of the murder, as well as his own involvement in the My Lai massacre. He is far from successful with this, and the trauma of those events, and the repression of his true culpability further diminishes his grip on reality. He manages to remove all references to the My Lai incident in his service record before his return to civilian life, but still secretly salutes his “Sorcerer” persona. Upon his return to the States, he immediately takes up his stalking of Kathy, and ends...