Study Guide for My Oedipus Complex (Frank O’Connor, 1950)

Discussion Questions for Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex” (1950)

1. Why is the story told from a child-narrator’s point of view? What is the impact of narrative voice on the story and on your response to the story?
2. Why do you think Frank O’Connor prefers to integrate humor into the story?
3. Make a comparison between Larry’s image of himself, his father and his mother at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story.
4. Discuss the symbolic significance of the war imagery in the story.
5. Discuss the symbolic significance of the enemy imagery in the story.
6. What is your understanding of the adult world in “My Oedipus Complex” in relation to Larry’s world?
7. In his depiction of Larry’s relationship with his mother and father, discuss how Frank O’Connor manages to demonstrate the shifts in mood in his story.
8. In relation to the following quotation from the story, discuss Larry’s perception of God: “I began to think that God wasn’t quite what he was cracked up to be.” (You can find other references to God in the story to justify your view)
9. According to Kate Murphy (1990), there are two types of world in Frank O’Connor’s stories: “the natural or normal worlds through which every person successively progresses in the process of growing up, and a number of ‘unnatural’ worlds which the individual elects or in which he arbitrarily finds himself” (p. 313).   Discuss Murphy’s argument in relation to Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex”. [Suggested reading: “Grappling with the world” By: Murphy, K.. Twentieth Century Literature, Fall90, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pp. 310-343]
10. Comment on the following quotation: “I could not help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself, and even at that age I was magnanimous.”
11. What is the significance of the model railway at the end of the story?
12. According to Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, personality develops in childhood through a number of stages, which can be called “Freud’s Stages of Personality Development.” Do some research to find out what these stages are, at what age each stage occurs, what the characteristics of each stage of personality development are, and how fixation or lack of resolution in one stage will affect the child and lead to behavioral disorders in his/her adult life.
13. Discuss to what extent Frank O’Connor’s story fits Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Useful links: About Frank O’Connor / Frank O’Connor- Audio-Visual /

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Study Guide for “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter” (D. H. Lawrence, 1922)

Discussion Questions for D. H. Lawrence’s “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter” (1922)

1. What does the title of the story reveal about the portrayal of Mabel?
2. On reading the 1st paragraph, what sense do you get of the relationship between Mabel and her brothers? Do the following opening paragraphs reinforce this view? Why? Why not? Please provide examples from the other paragraphs to justify your opinion.
3. Identify the animal imagery used in the description of each of the brothers and comment on what such imagery signifies about the characters and the social values of their time.
4. Comment on the following quotation: “His [Joe’s life] was over, he would be a subject animal now.”
5. In relation to the following quotation, comment on the reason(s) for Mabel’s silence: “They had talked at her and round her for so many years, that she hardly heard them at all.”
6. How do you think the way Jack Ferguson is dressed up in earlier parts of the story helps you understand his personality?
7. Comment on the significance of the following quotation: “At this point Mabel rose from the table, and they [Mabel’s brothers and Jack Ferguson] all seemed to become aware of her existence.”
8. The narrator seems to emphasize the eye contact between Mabel and Jack. Identify in which sections of the story these eye contacts are emphasized and discuss how they contribute to the story’s thematic concerns and development. (Suggested reading: “D. H. Lawrence and Tradition”, by Jeffrey Meyers, Studies in Short Fiction, Summer 1989, Vol. 26 Issue 3, p. 346)
9. Identify the paragraphs in which the narrator tells us about Mabel’s father, her mother and her mother’s grave. How does this information in these paragraphs help you understand Mabel?
10. Why does the narrator describe Jack Ferguson as “slave to the country-side”?
11. Comment on the significance of the following quotation: “It was grey, deadened, and wintry, with a slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties.”
12. What does Jack Ferguson think about working class people? What makes him think so?
13. The pond is a major symbol in the story. Examine its symbolic value by providing quotations from the story. Discuss whether it always symbolizes the same thing whenever used or whether it is polysemic.  What really happens in the pond?
14. Think about what the following can symbolize in the story: the kitchen fire, the whisky, the blanket, the hand, the flame.
15. How does D. H. Lawrence portray Mabel and Jack after Mabel regains consciousness in the kitchen? For example, why is Jack Ferguson described as “amazed, bewildered, and afraid”? Why does he kiss her “half in anger”?
16. Towards the end of the story, after Mabel and Jack change their clothes, we can see a change in their behaviors. How? Why? For example, why does Mabel tell Jack that she does not like him “in those clothes”?
17. What does the story tell you about the nature of love in general? What does the story reveal about social class and love? What do you think will happen to Mabel and Jack in the future?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Useful links: D. H. Lawrence: Biography – Penguin Books / The Life of Lawrence: BBC World Service /
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