The Disillusionment of Twin Peaks

In Twin Peaks, there is a young woman named Laura Palmer that is killed. Viewers are led to believe that the town of Twin Peaks is a perfect little town where everyone is happy and it is a perfect town. Although, there it is seemingly just Bob in the guise of Leland that is responsible for Laura’s death, I believe that the entire town is responsible for Laura’s death because they refused to accept that their town wasn’t perfect and that something like this could happen. Twin Peaks wants to believe that it is a perfect town even though it was plagued with problems of high school prostitution, drugs, incest, and constant adultery. These problems were all ignored so that everyone could go on and live in the “perfect” town of Twin Peaks. Laura was unhappy with the way things were in Twin Peaks. This unhappiness is visible in how she writes that no one really knows who she is in Twin Peaks even her best friend Donna. If the town’s people had noticed that she was unhappy, they could have stopped Bob and saved Laura’s life. Leland’s wife could have stopped Bob if she had stopped herself from getting drugged with opium. The town of Twin Peaks is also just caught up within itself. The people are always caught up with there own personal problems to notice what is going on with the town’s greater problem. They couldn’t see that people were getting taken advantage of, especially Laura Palmer. Laura was being taken advantage of by Leland/Bob, Ben Horne, and Leo Johnson. The town could have stopped this if they could see. Yet they could only see what they wanted to and they only wanted to see a “perfect” town.

By Austin N.