John Wade Character Analysis

John has being haunted by his secrets since childhood, So it’s no wonder that secrets have inevitably become a part of him while he manages to gain new ones. John wade has kept many of his actions and emotions secret from everybody thought out his entire life.

This secrets have constantly kept him on the edge of insanity, caused relationship problems and cost him his dream. Secrets are so vital to John’s nature that even his hobby consist of secrets and deceit. While in college, John would stalk Kathy and get great satisfaction from it while she knew about it. “Kathy dumped on the onions.

She seemed nervous, as if she were aware of Certain truths but could not bear to know what she knew, which was in the Nature of their love.

” (O’Brien 74) John and Kathy’s love was based on secrecy. Communication was discoursed by both of them when ever the other tried to come clean, as to suggest the truth was too much to handle. Kathy hated politics and seemingly wanted John to lose. She knew about the spying and secretly kept a grudge for making her abort unborn baby. When she tried to confess this to john, John brushed it off and prevented the confession.

This speaks of John’s dear of loss.

He might have known that what was coming would shake the relationship so he chose to keep living in deceit in hopes that he may never lose Kathy. This fear of loss goes back to the lose of his father. When john’s father died, he was not hurt the way you might expect. It seems almost as if john missed the concept of having a father figure rather then his actual father. This becomes clearer when it seems like john remembers an idolized, generic version of his father unlike the real one. John’s most traumatic experience is by far the Vietnam war.

While others are aware of the harsh realities of war, each soldier has his own personal demons attach to the war effort. The murder of weatherby was one of john’s darkest secrets. Even thought his death was and accident, john couldn’t help feel responsible for his death. The massacre John was involved in also affected him deeply. After the massacre he engaged in many battles to try to forget about those two events, and replace them with numerous smaller traumas. When John returned from war he would never be the same.

He now posses many psychological “features” such as amnesia, minor insomnia and a horrible temper.

All of those undignified actions he performed in Vietnam eventually came back to haunt him when his background was expose to the public, which caused him his political race. John, like anyone else, John can’t naturally rid himself of the characteristics that make us all humans. Lust is one of those traits that are ingrained in every human brain. Unfortunately John goes through moments where nothing else crosses his mind.

During this moments he is completely taken over by his urge to indulge in the Sexual acts that he is deprived of in war.

Some of the actions john wishes he could perform, many times, offer us a glimpse at his mind set. He wanted to swim through her blood and climb up and down her spine And drink from her ovaries and press his gums against the firm red muscle Of her heart. ” (O’Brien 71) These comments are not rare, which suggest those fantasies are a large part of his identity. John’s moral fabric seems not to recognize the taboos of the society around him.

This statement also proofs that john relates food and sex and thus shares one quality which psychologist have found on most, if not all, cannibals. Therefore, it isn’t farfetched to consider the possibility that if Kathy’s dead, she might be in his stomach.

If this logic is followed, it can be said lust Is partially to blame for Kathy’s possible death. Lust is also connected to many aspects of John’s psyche. His constant repetition of the equation 1 + 1 = 0, is a manifestation of his yearning to end all suffering with his final solution.

This final solution merges two important aspects (secrecy and lust) into one ultimate disappearing act. “A grand finale…he would see a man and a woman swallowing each other up like that pair of snakes along the trail near pinkville…the trick of his life.

The burdens of secrecy would be lifted. (O’Brien 76) John feels that with this trick his existence and the need of secrets will be eliminated. This final trick will merge him with Kathy so he never losses her while fulfilling his ultimate sexual fantasy of eating Kathy.

The way John feels about this “magic trick” reveal much about his mind set. It reveals that lust is deeply ingrained in his unconscious and is reflected in other parts of his life. It reveals that the manipulation he enjoys doing in his magic tricks are a mirror image of the deceit he creates in real life. In other words lust, magic and secrets are so connected that with out one the other couldn’t exist.

Example; if John would never learn his magic he might not find beauty in the disappearing act that snakes perform, which seem to awaken a sexual need in him, which might in turn suggest that perhaps john sees something sexual about magic, which reflect his life of secrecy and deceit. Magic, after all, only serves as a metaphor for John’s political and live life.

Saying that John Wade is a complex character, would be a great understatement. John is haunted by many forces, some not known by him or the reader that open many possibilities for analysis. This makes John an interesting character worth looking at.