Tag: Wolf in White Van

At first I was extremely skeptical of this book. It was very disjointed with a choppy literary style, things were not clearly explained at all and for me it took a little getting used to. However as I read on and discovered more about Sean and his “accident,” when he shot himself in the face, I realized the literary style mimicked his experience and was supposed to aide the reader in understanding Sean’s situation and empathizing with him.

The fragmented and disorganized presentation of the materials provokes feelings of confusion and, to a certain extent frustration, in the readers. You just want to know what is going on, why this guy named Sean has a messed up face and what the deal is with this game he has going. But you can’t, you have to slowly gather information and piece it together. At times it seems pointless and so you concentrate on the obsolete details, other times something is actually happening so you pay attention to the action. This is the same way Sean clearly felt about his life. Sometimes it’s pointless. He needs to concentrate on the little things to get him through the day, like the hidden people in the painting in his room. Sometimes life seems like it’s really worth living, like when he meets Steve and Kevin. I thought it was extremely wise to use the writing style to help convey the more complex feelings of the main character that people would otherwise miss.

---

 

Separation of realities, for lack of a better term, is a very strongly reoccurring theme in parts 1-7 (and ostensibly the rest) of Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. Early in the book the narrator describes memories coalescing rather than being separate experiences as well as the confusing branching structure of possibilities. The narrator clearly has a history of becoming extremely immersed in his own fantasy world and tuning out reality, but even the fantasy worlds blend together. The narrator even ensures that the universe that he created has a very structured system (with discrete inputs, which seems odd to me for this genre of gaming) to guarantee certain results from the available choices. The narrator’s statement, “Sometimes I have trouble finding the edges” (Darnielle 9) is very clearly central to the plot. The failure to identify the edge between the fantasy world and real life is what led to the death of two teens. So far, everything in the book has revolved around edges. The author strongly emphasizes several times that continuous experiences are broken into discrete pieces in the narrator’s mind or vice vera. I would argue that this book is largely about the difficulty of finding these existential edges.

Works cited:

Darnielle, John. Wolf in White Van. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Print.

I have an announcement. For the first time in this class, we are reading a book. Mind you it is still a book about a game, but I have enjoyed the first half of Wolf in White Van so far. It is a bit difficult to follow the plot as is it presented out of order and takes place at different times in the narrator Sean’s life. From what I can gather so far, Sean shot himself in the face when he was younger which led to the disfigurement of his face. To cope, Sean created a role-playing game which recently led a teenage girl to kill herself and left another young man in a severe condition.

Sean’s face causes many problems for him. He is constantly being looked at by strangers and people are afraid when he speaks or even smiles. He knows to keep is mouth shut, which is why I was surprised when he, “smiled [his] horrible smile” while talking to two men he met (Darnielle 75). For me this signifies something big. Sean is comfortable enough and willing to smile with these men who he just met. Kevin and Steve are probably the first people who have been honest with Sean about his face and situation, which I think is something Sean appreciated and why he was able to smile. People usually stop at Sean’s face, but they decided to look past it and get to know him as a person. This encounter is important because ir brings some light into the dark life Sean seems to have.

In John Darnielle’s novel, Wolf in White Van, Sean Phillips is a victim of depression and trauma. He questions himself about the meaning of his life and purpose in trudging on. As an avid fan of role-playing games and fantasy fiction, Sean closely analyzes all walks of life and compares them to qualities of fictional stories and games. He recollects memorable past experiences and closely examines them for what they are or what they might be.

There is a unique perspective on life uncovered in Sean’s recollection of spending time in the hospital. As opposed to living alongside the path of mainstream culture, “it is better sometimes to resist the temptation to stand up and follow the compass” or follow what everyone perceives to be “true” north (Darnielle 29). This is significant, not only in Sean’s situation as he tries to recover from his incident, but for anyone who is looking to separate themselves from the rest. It may be that the paths less taken are scarier and forbidden by the masses, however, the choice must be made if one is to truly separate themselves from the rest. This applies to all areas in society such as business, art, writing, music, etc. The application is obvious in these fields, seeing that businesses must separate themselves from their competitors and that musicians and writers must compose and compile unique work in order to keep their audience hooked. Although the decisions taken may or may not be the best or “right” ones, nevertheless they serve the purpose of providing diverse and unique qualities in day to day living.

Work Cited:

Darnielle, John. Wolf in White Van: A Novel. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

The featured image is not my own, but instead belongs to Dan Dickinson of Flickr. Link to the featured image can be found here.

The sanctuary of Trace Italian: Sean’s place to find solace. Where do you go to find solace from the world? While the imaginary microcosm we conjure up will most likely be more forgiving for ourselves, it nonetheless serves the same purpose: to shield us from the cruelties and traumas reality can introduce into our lives. In Wolf in White Van, it is clear that a central theme revolves around the idea of reality versus imagination: more importantly, when imagination blurs between reality, becoming a world just as important to us as the real world. For Sean, Trace Italian represents a shelter, and after a gruesome accident that leaves his face in ruins, it becomes everything to him. His use of imagination to sculpt Trace Italian helps him deal with the traumas he deals with in real life, even going so far as to make it a role-playing game accessible to the public via the mail. However, while some his players may be able to traverse the game effectively, even the smartest ones can never make it to his sanctuary in the Kansas desert.

For Sean, Trace Italian is a world that helps him escape from reality, a world he was forced to craft as he laid in the hospital after his accident. Imagine yourself in his shoes, left with no other options, “faced with the choice of either inventing internal worlds or having no world at all to inhabit” (Darnielle 23). The whole world is merely a story up for interpretation, and in order to cope with the reality of things sometimes personal alterations of the story is necessary.

Work Cited:

Darnielle, John. Wolf in White Van. New York: Picador, 2015. Print.