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Chapter 28

Summary: Chapter 28, How He Went Away

This chapter returns to John alone on Claude’s boat. He heads north and soon enough is in Canadian waters. He figures he can go about 250 miles. He sees nothing but a few deserted fishing cabins. John is good at being lost. At noon, he heads northeast where the woods look even deeper. He sings out loud. Other times he speaks to Kathy, telling her about Thuan Yen. There was no way to explain the secrets. John has always wanted to be good, but he has become lost. He calls out for Kathy several times.

John loses focus, and when he takes in his surroundings again, it’s about 4:30 p.m. If he cared about survival, he would be panicked, but instead, he laughs and heads toward a nearby island. John camps out that night, and it begins to snow. He pulls out Claude’s note and reads. Claude doesn’t blame John for anything. While Claude thinks that Kathy got lost, he also suggests that John go to Canada. The boat’s radio is set to the “right frequency” for talking. John mostly agrees with Claude. The only thing John knows for certain, however, is that Kathy is gone. Ultimately, he is responsible for what happened because his lies, secrecy, and tricks made both he and Kathy miserable. At midnight, John wakes in the rain. He speaks to Kathy, but she doesn’t answer.

The next morning, John continues north through snowfall. He cruises channels, trying to get lost. The scenery looks like a Christmas card. He turns on the radio and then turns it off. John feels the cold. He cries for a while, calls Kathy’s name, and then returns to Thuan Yen. He sets anchor and drinks vodka. John turns on the radio and hears Claude’s voice warning him that Lux is likely monitoring the channel. Claude asks how he’s doing and tells him Vinny is searching the house for Kathy.

Afterward, John drinks more and then disconnects the radio speakers. He turns off the boat’s lights. The night is cold and miserable. John wants to join Kathy and feel what she felt. He keeps revisiting Thuan Yen. He sees the villagers and his father die over and over again. John turns on the radio and broadcasts that humans have a false notion of choice. He didn’t choose his life of illusion. He falls asleep. When John turns the radio back on, he shares memories of Kathy. When he goes off the air, he throws the radio in the lake and heads north.

Analysis: Chapter 28

“How He Went Away” describes how John Wade disappears from his own life. He sneaks out in the morning, even though Claude clearly knew he was leaving, and when Lux and Vinny show up at the cottage later, like Kathy, John will be “gone.” This chapter differs from the numerous “Hypothesis” chapters that describe what might have happened to Kathy after she left the cottage. Seven of these chapters have already appeared (and the last chapter of In the Lake of the Woods is the final “Hypothesis” chapter), each showing a different fate for Kathy ranging from death by suicide, accident, and murder to her simply leaving John behind. This chapter, by contrast, is the only one that shows what happens to John after he leaves the cottage, and it is given a title other than simply “Hypothesis.” Readers might infer that this near-ending for John is the one the narrator prefers. The narrator doesn’t indicate, however, whether John is fleeing to Canada, as Claude suggests. If it is true that Kathy’s body is nowhere on the premises of the cottage, John has no real need to flee the country, unless he simply prefers a fresh, anonymous start.

Whatever happens to John next, in this chapter readers see an erratic man who has lost control of his thoughts. John’s emotions wander all over the place in this chapter. At times he seems certain that Kathy is dead or at the least lost, as when he quietly says her name or calls her sweet and lost. Other times, John yells out her name, as if he is trying to find her on the lake or in the woods. He even speaks to her conversationally, as if he asked her a question and she failed to answer. On John’s second day on the water, he begins drinking, so when he holds his radio talk show and interviews himself, it is difficult to determine whether he is simply drunk or going mad.

John also focuses on the twin causes of his trauma: the death of his father and the massacre of the villagers of Thuan Yen. He concludes that in his mind the Vietnamese villagers never really die and his father keeps hanging himself. This realization is illuminating. If John can’t stop relieving these events and if he can’t banish them from his head, even by using Sorcerer and escapism, it seems impossible for him to go through life in any kind of healthy fashion. Perhaps that is an indication that John will not survive this boat trip.

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