My Oedipus Complex

Larry is a dynamic narrator, able to go from incredible highs and affection to pure rages. As an adult revisiting a difficult time in his life, he narrates his daily life, starting at age five, with extreme stakes. Encompassing both an obliviousness to his parents’ true relationship to each other and to him, he is still able to function as a narrator for the story by being quiet, thoughtful, and watchful. O’Connor creates the immature voice of Larry through a blunt honesty verging on humor. Larry’s cruelty is sandwiched between his great passion for small things in life. He tenderly describes the light in his room but also asks whether another war could come to take Father away (14). Able to pass along information to the reader which he himself cannot interpret, Larry creates the melodrama of a love triangle within the quiet house.

Originally secure in his relationship with his mother as the story starts, throughout the story, he grows insecure in her affections and takes this tension out on both his mother and father. As new boundaries and routines are set within the family, young Larry displays maturity when it comes to the reality of the family’s precarious finances or “pennies,” as well as the way a new baby changes a family (17).