The Story of An Hour and In the Lake of the Woods Essay

The Story of An Hour and In the Lake of the Woods - Essay Example cunning and protest are linked together, intrinsically. Even in ancient times when art would be virtually the glory of kings and religious verses, writers would manage to intersperse their lines with feelings of protest about social conditions that existed during a particular pointedness of time. The importance of art in the success of certain social movements and in attaining for certain social ills the forethought that they deserve cannot be stressed too much. Artists in every age adjudge been the torchbearers of change and have managed to communicate the sentiment of the d avowtrodden in forms of protest, to the rulers of a community or nation. Forms of such protest can be directed against what an author feels is a social malaise-racial discrimination, discrimination found on gender, corruption, human trafficking and so on and so forth. The manner in which such issues are perceived by the world at self-aggrand ising depends greatly upon the way in which they are represented in works of literature by an author. In In the Lake of the Woods, the author Tim OBrien relates to the reader the story of a man named John Wade. The story revolves nigh the mystery of the murder of Johns wife and how he himself is suspected to have a establish in the murder of his wife. His wife, Kathy Wade, is found to be missing and the quest for the missing wife who is suspected to be dead forms a major part of the reinvigorateds plot. Another important aspect of the novels plot is the political career of the protagonist. John Wade loses an election to the U.S. senate by a enormous margin after his involvement in the massacre of an entire village is made human race. This turns the tide of public sentiment against him. The issue of public perception is thus introduced at a very early spot in the novel. The novel also explores how the childhood of a person can influence the life of a person at every stage. John Wade is shown to have been very close to his father when he was a child despite his fathers physically and emotionally abusive nature. His fathers death is shown to have been a major event in his life. His childhood sufferings led him to take safe in an alter-ego, the Sorcerer (OBrien, 1995). This helped him to be given the mundane sufferings of his life. Here, OBrien makes his readers aware of the escapist attitudes of his protagonist Wade achieves this escape through a repression of his emotions. This aspect of his personality is very important from the novels point of view, peculiarly on the thematic front. Later in his life, he is adept at hiding his emotions and feelings from other people, including his own wife. Many of the torments that John constructions in his life are put down to the traumatic events that he had to face while he was a soldier in Vietnam. The incident where an entire village is wiped out is based on a true incident that happened during the Vietnam War where the residents of a village named My Lai were massacred. Everybody, including women and children were killed in an inhumane plunder that unexpended the international community in shock. The people of Vietnam and the American soldiers who were a part of the operation were left scarred for life in an operation that was the result of a war that stretched on without an end in sight for either party. The tactics that the Vietnamese adopted made it difficult for the American army to mote the enemy to a particular