In The Lake Of The Woods Theme

What Love Can Do
As humans we desire to be loved unconditionally by others, and if our desires are not fulfilled we tend to feel a part of us is missing. For that desire, our actions typically are based on our feelings. Without feeling accepted, wanted, or most importantly loved, it is hard for an individual to be satisfied. In the Lake of the Woods shows how John Wade resorts to magic and manipulation when he feels deprived of love. The most important people in his life are not there for him when he most needs someone to rely on. The lack of love and respect from John’s parents, his wife and his leader in war led to John’s downfall in the end.
The cause of John's life difficulties can be traced back to his childhood. Throughout his youth,…show more content…
From the start of John and Kathy’s relationship, Kathy is a main contributor to the communication issues the couple has throughout their marriage. Even though Kathy knows about his horrifying past, she never does anything to help John cope with his issues, but instead makes them worse during their life together. In John and Kathy’s marriage, they do not talk about the issues they are having, nor do they put any effort in to try and fix it. When John is in Vietnam, their relationship only starts to fail even more than it already has. John attempts to communicate with Kathy while he is away, but Kathy for the most part lets him down through some of her degrading letters. A handful of the letters were cheerful and full of great detail, but many contained doubts or negative thoughts that she had. One letter that really hurt John read, “All those dead people, John, they don’t vote”(36). This letter only made him feel abused by Kathy and showed how unsupportive she was to him. Furthermore, letters like this only built up his issues with anger and rage because the one person he needed support from, was not giving it, leaving no one for him to escape to. A supportive girlfriend in this situation would not only have kept her negative comments to herself, but also would only have sent sympathetic and reassuring letters. John’s voluntary enlistment,…show more content…
With everything that has gone on in John’s past, a good wife would be there for John supporting him along the way, yet Kathy does the exact opposite. It was a big step for John to be willing to talk to Kathy about his issues, “Kath, listen, I need to tell you this. Something’s wrong, I’ve done things” (74) but Kathy shoots John down when he finally wants to talk about his past. She wouldn’t let him talk to her about it, and “she seemed nervous as if she was aware of certain truths but could not bear to know what she knew, which was in the nature of their love”(74). Kathy was being a selfish wife because she did not want to listen to, nor talk about John’s issues, and instead she chooses to ignore them. In a relationship, mutual communication is essential between the individual and his or her spouse. According to an article on Psych Central entitled Marriage Communication by Erika Krull, “The whole point of communicating is to be clearly understood. To do that, your channel of communication must go two ways” with your significant other. In Kathy and John’s case, John was trying to communicate with Kathy about an important subject and Kathy is too wrapped up in herself, leaving John with no one to talk to. Overall, Kathy is never there for John even when she knows he has no one else to turn to. She never encourages