7. My Oedipus Complex

The first group (Selen Onat, Denise Nart, Sıla Alemdar) presented the short story called “My Oedipus Complex” which is about the love of a 3-5 years old boy to his mother was written by Frank O’Connor. This Oedipus complex first explained by Sigmund Freud as “the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex” (retrieved from www.wikipedia.org). This complex was seen firstly in a Greek myth in which Oedipus killed his father, became a king and married with his mother.

This love to opposite sex parent is a very common situation almost for every child so at the beginning the story seems so sweet but after reading the story we can see how dangerous results can emerge. Our main character who called Larry is the narrator. This story passes during the World War 2 and Larry’s father is a soldier in Germany so he comes home sometimes. Larry explains that his father comes home and goes like Santa Claus. So he didn’t have a chance to know his father better. But after the war the father returns to home and the story begins. Before Larry passed all his moments with his mother alone and now he has to share her with his father. So day by day, he became jealous and starts to hate from his father.

As Frank O’Connor childhood was marked by his father’s alcoholism, I think this was the most important factor for him to write a story like this (a lack of a father role).

But at the end of the story we see that one night the father comes and lies next to Larry and Larry begins to think about excuse him. So I think that this is a new hope to make better the relationship with his father and to start to have a new role of father.

Also the presentation group related this theory of Freud with the story very good and their presentation passed well. The questions were good for integrate the class into presentation.

Thank you guys!...

*I know Sonja you don’t like the Wikipedia as a reference but as this is a blog I thought that it would be OK to use it=))