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At several points in In the Lake of the Woods, soldiers—Richard Thinbill and the narrator himself—suggest that it was the sunlight in Vietnam that made American soldiers commit murder and other atrocities. It’s difficult to understand what they mean by this. On one hand, to say that anything “made” soldiers kill is to absolve the soldiers of some of their guilt. On the other hand, to blame murder on something as ubiquitous as sunlight amounts to saying that everyone is capable of murder. In this sense, sunlight symbolizes nature—both the nature of the world and human nature. It may be the case that it’s human nature to kill and hurt people. In this interpretation, the soldiers in Vietnam are no more or less virtuous than the Americans who stay home. The very ambiguity of sunlight as O’Brien describes it corresponds to the ambiguity in the way we’re meant to view John Wade and his actions as a soldier in Vietnam.
Sunlight Quotes in In the Lake of the Woods
The In the Lake of the Woods quotes below all refer to the symbol of Sunlight. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 20
Quotes
The unknown, the unknowable. The blank faces. The overwhelming otherness. This is not to justify what occurred on March 16, 1968, for in my view such justifications are both futile and outrageous. Rather, it’s to bear witness to the mystery of evil. Twenty-five years ago, as a terrified young PFC, I too could taste the sunlight. I could smell the sin. I could feel butchery sizzling like grease just under my eyeballs.
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Sunlight Symbol Timeline in In the Lake of the Woods
The timeline below shows where the symbol Sunlight appears in In the Lake of the Woods. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 20: Evidence
...there. When he saw My Lai, he understood why the massacre occurred: “it was the sunlight.” There was a feeling of unknowable wickedness, he continues, in the environment. Other factors that...
(full context)
Chapter 21: The Nature of the Spirit
...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,...
(full context)
Chapter 22: Hypothesis
...navigate her way back to the cottage. She looks at the map and at the sun, and tries to determine which direction is which. The exercise calms her. As she plans...
(full context)
