The Two Sides of Leland Palmer

There are scenes where it is as if Leland Palmer has two sides. One side of Leland shows the loving and caring father he is towards Laura and how much he loved her, and another where his love for her turned incestuous resulting in anger and jealousy. The scene when Jacques Renault was lying in bed in the hospital, and Leland, after hearing Jacques Renault is the potential killer of Laura Palmer, drives to the hospital and suffocates him with a pillow. During this time Leland is not under possession of Bob, which leads me to believe that Leland does have two sides to him. Leland killed Jacques Renault in an attempt to cover up his own crime. His logic in this action is that he would be shown as a killer but only because he had loved Laura so much that he wanted revenge. This would cause the citizens of Twin Peaks to not suspect him to be the killer of Laura. In her article “Family Romance, Family Violence, and the Fantastic,” Diane Stevenson speculates that “When Laura Palmer’s father dies in the series Twin Peaks, there is a kind of reconciliation between his two sides as the loving and protective father appears for the first time to confront the incestuous and abusive father.”This further speculation attest that Leland is a double sided man and who had loved his daughter and wanted to protect her; he could not protect her from himself.

John L.