In The Woods Character Analysis Essay

Basel Shaded

Mrs. Gomez

AP English IV

19 October 2016

The Dark Past.

Past events and traumas in a character's life drastically impacts that character's present and future actions, choices and values. This is expressed through Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods. O’Brien’s consciously uses John’s past traumas to develop the plot of the entire novel.

John first trauma or major past event was the death of his father and his father figure as a whole. His father was a very liked man in his community, but John’s Father was an alcoholic and not many knew about this other than his family. John picks up this trait from his father as seen throughout the novel John tends to drink a lot especially at times when he feels he needs help

John does this to himself and other throughout the book. “In the mirror, where miracles happened, John was no longer a lonely little kid”(O’Brien 65). This is an example of John deceiving himself as the was just doing tricks all alone in a mirror, but the made himself not feel alone. The also used this is cope with his father’s death he would look at the mirror and pretend his father was there smiling at him. The whole concept of magic in the novel is to express how John deceives himself and others. Using the mirror to deceive himself and being a politician to deceive others. This idea of magic is what made John’s personality and if it was not for his father the would not have used it as to fill the emptiness that he had, if it was not for kathy he would not have used magic to find love, and if it was not for the war he would not have used magic to manipulate tons of people and become a politician. Magic is the key role to everything John has done. It is what truly made John, John.”His whole life had been managed with mirrors”(O’Brien 242) this proves how dependent John was on deceiving himself to believing certain things. He depended on mirrors to manage his life because it would deceive him into believing anything. Magic is the past event that John used to solve all his issues and become John, he depended on it heavily.He used it to deceive everyone including