In the Lake of the Woods Chapters 29–31 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 29–31

Summary: Chapter 29, The Nature of the Angle

Starlight bends on the lake’s surface. From the bottom of the lake with her eyes open, Kathy watches the fish. A peninsula known as the Northwest Angle in Minnesota is surrounded on three sides by Canada. It is wilderness here. People have vanished before in Lake of the Woods. French explorers arrived in the 1700s when the land was occupied by native tribes. Then came fur traders and lumbermen. The first settlers built cabins in 1882, and a few immigrants built farms. Until 1969, no roads even reached the area. On the northeastern shore, a cottage stands near the lake. The nature of the angle shapes reality. In John’s imagination, Kathy stares up at him from the bottom of the lake. She belongs to the angle. She’s not here but not gone.

Summary: Chapter 30, Evidence

The evidence in this chapter primarily focuses on what various people think happened to John and Kathy. Lux reports that law enforcement didn’t find anything on the property, though he wishes he had been able to question John more thoroughly because John didn’t seem upset about Kathy’s disappearance. Vinny believes John dumped her body in deep water. Ruth figures that Claude helped John leave and that he and Kathy are together somewhere. Bethany says Kathy was very happy after the election and never specified when she’d be back in the office. Myra recalls that John seemed strange when he purchased his supplies and he also bought a tourist map, leading her to think he didn’t commit suicide. Tony thinks they ran away because they had nothing to come back to.

A quote from Sigmund Freud addresses the nature of a biographer as one who lacks access to the truth. The narrator also writes two footnotes in this chapter. One footnote responds to Ruth’s implied criticism about not wasting one’s life, and the narrator acknowledges spending years trying to determine what happened to John and Kathy. The other footnote, a rather lengthy one, responds to Thinbill’s comment that John will probably be swatting flies wherever he is, and here, the narrator admits he has managed to put much of what happened in Vietnam out of his memory.

Summary: Chapter 31, Hypothesis

The narrator hypothesizes that John and Kathy could have a happy ending. Possibly they decide to go off together. No evidence exists that makes this scenario impossible. John is a magician and has nothing holding him back. Maybe he joins Kathy on the shore of an island. They sit around a fire coming up with names for their children. They keep going, taking a plane or bus out of the country. John and Kathy share all their secrets and are willing to make changes to achieve happiness.

John’s last radio broadcast is on October 26. He drunkenly speaks with tears, sorrow, and prayers to Kathy and God. Toward the end, he asks Kathy where she is. John never admits to knowing where she is or what happened to her. She is gone. He can never get over losing her.

In 1986, winter comes early to the lake. The birds and wildlife leave. John loses himself there too, calling out Kathy’s name and his love for her. The narrator asks: Could John be a man, innocent of killing Kathy, or must he be a monster?

This chapter also includes several footnotes that discuss the different possibilities for an ending. The book’s final footnote addresses the fact that the narrator would like to offer the happy ending as the ending but admits that there is no way to tidily wrap up a love story.

Analysis: Chapters 29–31

The final three chapters provide as much of a definitive ending as possible in a book that doesn’t provide an ending. In keeping with the general organization of the book, the final three chapters reflect three of the different types of chapters in the book: One chapter muses about the “nature of” things, one chapter presents “evidence,” and one chapter shares a hypothesis. The previous chapter, “How He Went Away,” represents the fourth type. Each of these three chapters addresses a different aspect of the story. Together, they give a sense of closure, allowing readers to apply their interpretations to the words they have read. The narrator gets the final word, however, and his last footnote widens the scope of the novel to suggest that readers should question the way they think about narratives.

Unlike previous “The Nature of . . .” chapters, Chapter 29, “The Nature of the Angle” is not based on John’s past. Instead, it opens with an image of Kathy with eyes open at the bottom of the lake but then expands to include the surrounding water and land, almost as if the lake is a character with its own history and personality. This choice could suggest that the narrator believes that the story of John and Kathy is intrinsically connected to Lake of the Woods. This concept makes some sense; after all, the proximity to the boat does create an element of chance in both John’s and Kathy’s disappearances. But the final paragraph of the novel also says, “And here in a corner of John Wade’s imagination, where things neither live nor die, Kathy stares at him from beneath the surface of the silvered lake.” This line suggests that perhaps this chapter is part of John’s past, a past when he either knew or imagined Kathy was dead at the bottom of the lake. The images describing Kathy may be how John envisions her.

There’s another possibility for the function and imagery of this chapter. Does the fact that the narrator places Kathy at the bottom of the lake show that he thinks she is dead? Likely, the narrator would deny the possibility, but as with the previous chapter about John’s disappearance, this is the only chapter that places Kathy in this scenario.

The “Evidence” chapter provides summative statements from people interviewed about Kathy and John. Only one person, Vinny, is certain that John killed Kathy. The majority of witnesses believe that John didn’t do it. Whether people think Kathy ran away, John ran away, or they are together in an unknown location, the Sigmund Freud quote reminds readers to approach the mystery with skepticism. Freud essentially says that biographers lie and conceal in their work because getting to the truth is not possible. This statement, easy to overlook among a collection of quotes that are specific to John and Kathy’s situation, serves as a reminder to readers to question anything that someone writes about another person.

The last chapter of the book presents the narrator’s final hypothesis: a happy ending. In the footnote, the narrator says he wants to stop right there, with Kathy and John moving into their brighter future. Except he can’t because that’s not the truth. In this world of John and Kathy, which the narrator has spent four years researching, there is no known ending. It is not up to the narrator to create a happy ending for them as much as he wants to do so. At the end of the book, John is alone and drunk and broadcasting on the radio, as readers witnessed in Chapter 27, grieving for Kathy who was “gone,” just as the narrator described Kathy in Chapter 1. The narrator and the reader have come full circle. No one knew what happened to Kathy, except that she was gone, and still no one knows what happened to Kathy, except that she is gone.