Ill Will Sparknotes

Dan Chaon’s Ill Will
One of the darkest books of the year, Ill Will is a story you will never forget; it’s dark subplots are intertwined to unveil difficulties all humans face. “People can find patterns in all kinds of random events. It's called apophenia. It's the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information.” -Dan Chaon. Examining something as intricate as the human brain takes great meaning and caution; but when handled right, can be a powerful message. Writing with the mind is a gift that many audiences can appreciate, for the relatability and emotions tugged from it. From murders to diving into a history he wished he could forget, Ill Will introduces the mind in a way that not many have tried. Despite being a fictitious tale, Chaon focuses on real, serious events, and dives into the true meaning of what it is to be human.. our mind is not always what we think.

The psyche of a human being is a
The story not only focuses on one mind, as it also covers the psychologists son, a boy who falls down a spiral of drug addiction, and the stepbrother of his past, a suspected murder and freed from thirty years in prison, despite being innocent. The minds are put in a ring of thoughts, bouncing off of one another, forming the real truth of their pasts. The man befriends a psychopath, soon found to be the insidious murderer, a puppeteer that had been using the psychiatrists madness to his doing. Many of these characters face struggles of corruption, manipulation, and fear, constantly living in a state of dim humanity, and Chaon shows this very clearly with his imagery and dark tone. The multiple characters just show how real these events can really be, and make the reader even more intrigued. These minds have been damaged, but still manage to help the plot move