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In The Lake Of The Woods By Tim O Brien

1391 Words6 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s novel “In the Lake of the Woods” the protagonist John Wade a Vietnam war veteran struggles through life after retiring from the army. Through textual evidence within the novel one of John’s struggles is battling his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is attributed to traumatic events such as war that soldiers deal with when coming back from war into civilian life throughout his senior years. This disease is diagnosed after analyzing scholars work upon these mental illness that soldiers have. These sources are “Traumatic Encounters: Reading Tim O’Brien” as well as “PLAUSIBILITY OF DENIAL: Tim O'Brien, My Lai, and America” both scholarly sources discuss the traumatic experiences that John had which led to his PTSD. …show more content…

Flashbacks, nightmares, and hallucinations. This trifecta of mental phenomenons attributed to PTSD patients as symptoms is described as “Debilitating symptoms that largely involve unwillingly repeating the traumatic event.”( McWilliams 5) John Wade throughout the novel recounts his experience during the Vietnam war which he saw horrendous actions imposed on the innocent by blood thirsty comrades of his. However the most repetitive story he recounts is about the killing of PFC Weatherby; “After he’d shot PFC Weatherby- which was an accident in the purest of reflex- he tricked himself into believing it hadn’t happened the way it happened.” (O’Brien 68) Foremost this shows the suppression of memory that John uses to cloud the reality of what happened when he murdered the PFC. In addition to that John brings this event up many times throughout the book, not only recounting many events in different chapter during the war but always bringing the PFC back into his story tellings. Lastly John wakes up “Twice during the night…sweating”(O’Brien) This shows flashbacks that have begun taking over his life from accounting war experiences to his nightmares which resulted from the PTSD which he must now live

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