In the Lake of the Woods: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

We are in Vietnam, during the My Lai Massacre. The killing takes four hours, and it is both systematic and thorough. In the sunlight, soldiers shoot, rape, sodomize, and stab Vietnamese villagers. PFC Richard Thinbill, a young, good-looking man, asks Sorcerer if he can hear “the sound.” Sorcerer nods that he can, except that it’s actually thousands of sounds. Thinbill says that the army told them there would be civilians—he says that the people their army company killed must be Communists, then. He asks Sorcerer how many people he killed; Sorcerer says he killed two. Thinbill says that he didn’t kill anyone.

The narrative cuts to John’s Senate campaign. On September 9, John loses in a landslide. John delivers a brief concession speech, thinking privately that his career is over. John and Kathy return to their hotel and sit, naked, listening to traffic. Later on, Tony stops by and talks with John and Kathy. He tells Kathy that he loves her dearly; Kathy has “never looked happier” than when she hears this.

Tony tells John that he’ll be working for Ed Durkee, the man who defeated John, from now on. John calls Tony a “bastard,” and Tony replies that he asked John a hundred times if he had anything to hide. He adds, “a village is a terrible thing to waste.” Tony and John drink a final toast while Kathy goes to the bathroom. Tony guesses that she’s angry at Tony’s “betrayal.” He also tells John that he’s long had a crush on Kathy, and even went to a gym in an effort to lose weight for her.

The narrative returns to Vietnam. Charlie Company moves toward the sea in the east. Thinbill mentions the spirit world to Sorcerer, and observes, “Fuckers just don’t die.” The soldiers are mostly silent, although Calley is talkative, saying that “gooks are gooks.” When Calley claims that the operation in My Lai was a success, Sorcerer says that there were babies and women there. Calley brushes a fly off his sleeve and then denies that there were any babies. Other soldiers nod in agreement with him. Calley advises Sorcerer not to cast any stones, since he’s guilty too.

Thinbill says, half to the other soldiers and half to himself, that they must have killed easily three hundred villagers that day. Someone tells him that they’ll all bathe in the river and wipe the blood and “stink” off their bodies, but Thinbill insists that they’ll never be able to wash their experiences away. Sorcerer advises Thinbill to forget. As they talk, they hear flies buzzing all around them.

The next day, Charlie Company travels toward a river, and Sorcerer can’t stop thinking about the old man with a hoe whom he shot. He tries to make himself forget this sight, but he cannot. The men make camp in an area where there are many landmines. They sit and laugh with each other, and suddenly, a landmine explodes and blows off Paul Meadlo’s left foot. There is a silence after this explosion, then voices, and then the buzz of the flies.

John remembers how his father called him Jiggling John. John knew at the time that his father was drunk, but he still felt ashamed of himself. Shortly after his father starts to mock him, he orders a diet he’s seen advertised in a magazine. When the bill comes, John’s father tells John, “that’s a whole lot of bacon fat.”

By the eighth grade, John has begun to grow, and his father calls him Javelin John instead of making fun of his weight. Throughout middle school and high school, John makes himself feel better by looking in the mirror. He has almost no friends, but he puts on magic shows at school and birthday parties. His audiences applaud, and while they don’t exactly give him affection, they give him something very close to affection, he believes. Sometimes, he would replace his father’s bottles of vodka with water; later, when John was smirking, John’s father would tell him that he looked ridiculous. By spying on his father and playing tricks on him, John thinks, he’s developing a bond of love with his father.

On March 17, 1968, after Meadlo is taken to the hospital, Charlie Company returns to Thuan Yen. There, they see tremendous pain and suffering: women who have been raped and stabbed, mass graves, and men with missing limbs. Sorcerer tells himself that it is all an illusion. The narrator writes that Sorcerer isn’t fooled.

The sight of flies and dead bodies makes many of the soldiers physically sick. Calley, who isn’t sick at all, asks his soldiers, intimidatingly, if they’ve heard any rumors that what happened in the village was criminal or murderous. Thinbill, intimidated, says that he hasn’t heard any rumors of this. When Calley asks Sorcerer if he’s heard anything about murder, Sorcerer says he’s “deaf” and “blind.” Afterwards, Calley tells the men to find Vietcong weaponry in the village. The soldiers look, but they find nothing, as they knew they wouldn’t. Privately, Sorcerer makes himself forget what he’s seen and done. He thinks about Kathy and tells himself that he’s a decent person.

Later in the night, Thinbill approaches Sorcerer and asks him if he thinks the two of them should say something about the massacre they’ve witnessed. Sorcerer is unsure how to respond—he thinks about the people he’s killed, including the old man with the hoe, and PFC Weatherby. As he feels himself having to make a choice, he begins to giggle uncontrollably, frightening Thinbill.

As John giggles, he thinks about the other soldiers firing quickly and skillfully at Vietnamese women and children. He pictures a woman’s head exploding, and thinks that the villagers are gradually merging into one huge, bloody mass. Calley laughs and makes wisecracks about the mess, and other soldiers cry, urinate, and resume firing on their victims. As he laughs, John rolls into the mud. Thinbill tells him to take it easy. John begins to calm down, but as he calms himself he pictures Weatherby and remembers shooting him.

As John stops laughing, he hears other sounds in the area—some people are crying, and there are echoes of gunshots. Thinbill tells John he has the right attitude—“fuck the spirit world.”