The journaling in “Journal According to John”
The novel “Journal According to John” is about many things but journaling stands out. It starts out with a recently divorced man, John, who is trying to make sense of his failed marriage and his dysfunctional life by using a journal to record his thoughts. These actual journal entries are interesting because they lend themselves to intimacy between the readers and the main character.
Journaling is also a device that is used in the novel to facilitate a subjective viewpoint and the main character’s perspective is definitely skewed. Written in another way, there could be other perspectives. This particular form of writing is a direct antithesis of the manhood that John is trying to find so it is interesting to find out if he does come to term with his masculinity while writing in this way. It might be fair to say that not many men write in journals. So what will happen when one does?
John is in the profession of giving therapy to people and journaling is sometimes about personal therapy. He is trying to assist people in healing themselves but he is in need of healing himself. John writes about other people in his work but he comes to journal writing reluctantly because it’s easier to write and make a diagnosis about other people than to make one about himself. However, the journal takes on a life of its own and John’s constant, personal writing allows him to look at himself for the first time.
This is important because John blames his mother for his dysfunctional life. The beauty of journaling lies in really looking at the self and no one else. Although this seems like a subjective thing, John’s thoughts on paper allowed him to take issues from his mind and shift the way he sees things. What journaling does is transport decisions and issues from the subjective mind. Written down on paper, John can distance himself from his words and look objectively at them.
In the final analysis, the journal entries in the novel are not just for voyeuristic reasons. They provide a good picture of how journaling can bring insight and clarity into people’s lives.