The De-realized self in Tim O’Brien’s in the Lake of the Woods

Abstract EN

Since war has become the foreign policy to solve international crises, and since violent occurrences of all sorts, natural catastrophes, killing, abuse and rape are threatening the world with unseen wounds affecting it physically, emotionally and mentally.

Trauma and mental disorders have taken the interest of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology and literature.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD), in particular, has managed to create a pedagogic (scholastic) bond between literature and psychology to reach a full understanding of this mental disorder and to cure what has been considered a phenomenon of trauma.

The present paper attempts to apply Cathy Caruth’s reading of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in her book: Trauma: Exploration in Memory (1995) on Tim O’Brien’s novel In the Lake of the Woods (1994).The novel traces the psychological references of the traumatized John Wade’s unusual war experience that goes beyond the range of human awareness and renders him to be in a devastating mental haze