"My Oedipus Complex" by Frank O’Connor (1963) and “Araby” by James Joyce (1914)

Fantasies at War

    My Oedipus Complex by Frank O’Connor (1963) set in the close of World War I and Joyce’s Araby (Dubliners, 1914) set in Dublin in times of cultural and religious colonization of Ireland by Great Britain (Pedram Manieem, Shahriyar Mansouri) revolve around stories retrospectively rendered from the perspective of childhood. Lines can be drawn between both stories as to how the narrators´ perception of the world is presented with irony and an underlayer of political, social and economic circumstances.

    Larry’s father comes and goes, unnoticed, like Santa Claus in his uniform, disguised in this fantasy, Larry copes with his father’s “mysterious entries and exists.” The war, “ he says, “is the most peaceful period of his life.” The absent father, noticeable for his “amiable inattention,” returns home in the aftermath of the war and ”usurps” his place in the fondness and attachment he feels towards his mother. He must keep quiet, not disturb his father. He is ostracized from the thalamus. It is the first time he hears those “ominous words,” “talking to Daddy.”  God is to be blamed for listening to his prayers.  Economic hardships wax the tension in the family: no more money at the post office and a bedridden unemployed dad that suffers from  shell shock (post traumatic syndrome suffered by many soldiers affer the first war) coalesce to pinpoint the paralysis of the times. An epiphanic moment occurs when the new baby arrives and Larry and his father meet in their own displacement from the mother’s contesting attention.

    In James Joyce’s Araby, the protagonist lives under the aegis of his uncle and aunt in an equally oppressive atmosphere as the opening of the short story illustrates, blindness and imprisonment being metaphors for it:

• "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free."

• "On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush." (“Araby”) 

• See the political implications of this quote in this other passage from “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce: Dante [his grandaunt] had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back was for Parnell." (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

• "I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord."

    The narrator’s fantasy of “Araby,” as an exotic escape from this darkness is already frustrated: politics, religion and oppressiveness will impede the fulfilment of his desires. He is doomed from start: his uncle is late for him to go to the bazaar, religion acts as a constraining force, and his pride will stop him from sparing his money out. The house where they live, he says, belongs to a priest. This priest refers to another short story “The Sisters” (Dubliners), connected with the sin of simony ( trafficking with religious objects). 

The narrator’s first infatuation with Mangan’s sister will forcefully drive him to the bazaar, “Araby,” on an errand to buy her some token. Both Araby and his first love are wrapped in a foggy halo of fantasy: 

I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.

When he arrives, the bazaar is closed. he listens to two men speaking in a foreign accent, “English,” and full of pride, he recoils from the prospect of buy anything.

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Irony, humour, innocence and growing pride understate and conversely highlight the frustrated fantasies that both narrators undergo in their harsh encounter with the social and political turmoil of the times.