The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait of a boy who seems to be carrying the Oedipus Complex. The boy is Larry and he is the narrator and leading person in the short story ‘My Oedipus Complex’ written by the well-acknowledged writer O’Connor in 1950 as part of his book ‘My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories’.
The essay will look into Larry’s profile and his process of growing out of his inner complexity. It will shed light on O’Connor’s mastery in depicting characters, their personal complexities and concerns and their individual process of growing out of them.
The thematic core of the short story by O’Connor is based on what has been characterized by Freud as the ‘Oedipus Complex’. Oedipus according to the Ancient Greek Mythology was a King who by falling into his destiny’s steps, he got married to his mother without being aware that the woman he fell in love with was his mother. This incident studied on behalf of Freud, the father of psychoanalysis has been established as a psychological principle leading people to adopting a certain behavior. Young boys are supposed to fall into the trap of their subconscious to fall in love with their mothers without really realizing that the feeling they are experiencing is love. Their minds and souls are obsessed with the image, the character and the behavior of their mothers and they turn out without actually realizing it to look for their mother’s recognition, their mother’s admiration and their mother’s love.
Love is not seen as an unconditional condition within which they are to operate but it is misinterpreted as passion. So according to psychological principles the majority of young men go through this procedure of growing and becoming adults in such a way that they all go through becoming obsessed with their mothers.
This is what happens to Larry, a modern version of Oedipus created by the writer O’Connor. Larry is the son who stays all alone with his mother since his father has gone to war. When World War I finishes his father comes back to find out that his son does not have the best feelings for him. O’Connor portrays the profile of Larry with humor and underlying irony looking into the inner parts of one’s soul and the process of maturity which is something that all people have to go through.
Larry’s mother seems to host the expected love that a mother has for her son without having the slightest suspicion on what her son may be feeling. The father on the other hand is the man who has just returned to his family to find and define his place and position as the man of the family.
O’Connor surprises his readers with his insight to people’s psychology. There is a part of the short story which is really astonishing since it seems to combine the innocence of a child’s soul and the need for achieving his personal goal on behalf of the underlying passions in one’s soul. There is the passage in which Larry asks ‘"Mummy," I said that night when she was tucking me up, "do you think if I prayed hard God would send Daddy back to the war?" She seemed to think about that for a moment. "No, dear," she said with a smile. "I don’t think He would." "Why wouldn’t He, Mummy?" "Because there isn’t a war any longer, dear." "But, Mummy, couldn’t God make another war, if He liked?" "He wouldn’t like to, dear. It’s not God who makes wars, but bad people." "Oh!" I said. I was disappointed about that. I began to think that God wasn’t quite what He was cracked up to be.’
So, O’Connor proves how he manages to show to people that opposite powers, feelings and elements complete each other without eliminating one another. It is possible for one to feel love for his mother and dislike for his dad. It is possible for people to be torn between different, opposing feelings which disorientate them and lead them to feel unable to choose one or the other path.
O’Connor is a writer who brings his readers/ audience face to face with their inner concerns and agonies. He brings the readers face to face with the tragedy lying in one’s human soul. There is an underlying tragedy. One is to go through many steps of growing mature, of coming in terms with his / her mixed feelings, with his /her illusions and probable false ideas.
O’Connor is the writer who reveals the internal labyrinth whose outing is found only through one’s personal procedure of finding out who someone really is, what his personal needs are and how he is to treat the collapse of his personal false illusions or ideas which prove to be just the elements of an initial microcosm which collapses when maturity comes and helps one to enter the real life and world.
Attention though should be paid to the narrative technique adopted by O’Connor since in this short fiction story it is the narrator who is at the same time the leading person of the story. If this story was said on behalf of the mother or the father, then this story would not really have any interest in reading it or feeling that it has certain knowledge or motivations to provide its readers with as far as the way one’s character operates.
This technique makes the story even more easily approachable since the reader feels that there is an internal voice, his / her own internal voice which addresses him / her and talks to him / her in a loud voice now easily heard. It is common knowledge that people’s internal voice cannot always make itself clear and heard since there is lots of hesitation in people when it comes to listening to their real needs and thoughts.
It seems that people need motivation and strength in order to face their own personal truths. Like Oedipus, the Ancient Greek King avoided admitting to the truth of his actions and the trap in which he had fell, likewise the young boy Larry who is only five years old seems unable to admit to his own personal truth which is that he develops an increasing dislike towards his dad.
Larry has dressed the feeling he has in the dress of his right to love his mother and allow no one else to enjoy her tenderness and care. Larry seems to be unable to see what is really happening inside him but when the other new born child comes to the family then all parts fall into their pieces. Larry begins opening himself to his father’s love since he asks for his father’s arms to hug him the night that his father goes to sleep with him in the same bed because the baby is making too much noise. So what really happens is that Larry still seems to have a very long way to go to find out the real truth lying in his interpersonal relationships developed within his family but he sees that his father has some things in common with him.
All the plot is interesting due to the perspective it is given. This is not a memoir from childhood. This is a man admitting to his personal adventure of growing up which he still seems not to have been able to deal with it successfully. But he holds a certain amount of self – sarcasm and humor. Besides personal adventures cannot or ought not to be treated without humor.
Humor is a filter which can really clear the clouds which may cover one’s personal truths, nightmares, and difficult moments. And O’Connor knows how to put across the message that it is not wrong for anyone to admit his / her false ideas or to try even with a great delay to clear them out and solve them.
Conclusion
It has been said that literature is a personal procedure through which each individual is to find out his / her own personal fortune which will be the landmark throughout his / her life’s difficulties. Reading the short story of O’Connor one realizes that self-knowledge is a painful procedure which turns out to be an individual fortune which can be the only way out from personal dead-ends, false impressions and concerns and agonies.
Works cited
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Alwasilah A. Chaedar 1993, Linguistik Suatu Pengantar Bandung Angkasa
Armstrong Richard, 1999, Oedipus as Evidence: The Theatrical Background to Freud's Oedipus Complex
Charles Rycroft A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London, 2nd Ed. 1995)
Joseph Childers, Gary Hentzi eds. Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995)
Mizener Arthur (ed) 1967 Modern Short Stories : The Use of Imaginaton New York. W.W. Norton Comp
Scheifer Ronald Robert Con Davis 1984 Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies New York London Longman
Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. 1949. Theory of Literature. Penguin Books
