My Oedipus Complex

“My Oedipus Complex”

In “My Oedipus Complex” Frank O’Connor uses the interesting theory that infamous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud create to tell a clever story about a young boy, Larry, who grows up in his own safe world with just himself and his mother. However, when his father, which Larry often refers to as Santa Claus, returns from World War I it is a constant battle between the two for the mother’s love and attention.Father was in the army all through the warвЂ"the first war, I meanвЂ"so up

to the age of five, I never saw much of him, and what I saw did not worry

me. Sometimes I woke and there was a big figure in khaki peering down

at me in the candlelight. Sometimes in the early morning I heard the

slamming of the front door and the clatter of nailed boots down the lane.

These were Father’s entrances and exits. Like Santa Claus he came and

went mysteriously. (O’Connor 262)

This focus of interest is quickly established for one; the boy tells us that, while the war lasted, his father “came and went mysteriously” ( 262) and that the only disadvantages he noticed about the visits was that “it was an uncomfortable squeeze between Mother and him when I got into the big bed in the early mornings” (262). Here the “boy’s childlike egotism” (Mizener 32) makes him assume without any question that everyone exists from his pleasure and he has no reality of his own. By have this childlike egotism there in nothing more natural than for Larry to make running and getting into the bed with his mother to discuss the days plans a habit or that he is annoyed by his Father’s interuption of this routine. This leads to the shock that he will face when his father is to be coming home permanatly. Althought his mother make a suggestion that him sleeping in the same bed all night is unhealthy, take toll on his ego. In her argument she makes no mention of Father, so it leads him to suspect that she like Father better than him. Here once again one is reminded of the handicap of unsuspected ignorance that Larry pocesses and labors with continually.

Before one continues to trace the boy’s battle with his Father for his Mother’s love and affection O’Connor shows one where Larry’s strength lay, “the appeal