Comparison of Frank O'Connor Short Stories

Marc D’Angelo
Mr. Bohannon
October 22, 2012
Essay: Comparison of Frank O’Connor’s Three Short Stories In the three short stories written by Frank O’Connor, he depicts the narrator’s relationship with family similar in his short stories. In all three short stories, “My Oedipus Complex”, “First Confession”, and “Masculine Protest”, O’Connor portrays the narrator as a young aged boy whose relationship with each family member has a unique similarity throughout each of these short stories. Frank O’Connor illustrates a struggle of close relationship between the narrator and his family due to the fact that O’Connor portrays some family members to act unjust and shows a deeper conflict with each member. The narrator is seemed to have a sense of intelligence and standpoint on his relations with the people around him in whom O’Connor relates each story to his own family life. Frank O’Connor illustrates a relationship between mother son in this case the narrator and the mother on a relationship that is unique in a way of a caring relationship but one that is tragic. The short stories, “My Oedipus Complex” and “Masculine Project”, the relationship of the narrator and mother are similar in which the mother is irritating and insecure. In “My Oedipus Complex”, the mother demands the narrator due to the fact that she seems like all she wants to do is please her husband and through her actions to the narrator, her stubbornness and cruelty gives the narrator no respect or regard for his mother. The narrator is annoyed and sees right through his mother’s issues who let it out on her son. “Masculine Project” also demonstrates a mother-son disconnection because of the mother’s careless, abandoned attitude. With no consideration of her child, the narrator runs away and symbolizes a disconnect for his mother. An unjust treatment from a provider causes the narrator to have a guarded, mature conscience, and a better grasp of seeing through the issues of his family. Frank O’Connor’s short story “First Confession” shows the relationship of the mother and the narrator as more of a success due to the fact that the mother does not appreciate her mother. In that contraception, it shows how O’Connor illustrates a family lineage of bad relationship. Frank O’Connor does on the other hand symbolize a unique connection of the narrator and his father throughout each of the short stories. The father figure is depicted in each short story as, “a far”. The father is not completely connected with the narrator because his presence seems to lack throughout the narrator’s life. This may be because Frank O’Connor’s father was an alcoholic and showed distant relations with his father due to his addiction to alcohol and struggle to be connected with his son and family. In “Masculine Project”, O’Connor portrays the father to be involved in work and the narrator not seeing his father often. In “Oedipus Complex”, the narrator does not see his father because his father is in the Army. On the other hand, the fathers play a significant role in sharing a mind like the narrator. At the end of “Masculine Project”, the narrator feels a longing connection with his father when he has run away and very far away from his mother. He feels a sense of love towards his father so he calls him to help him make his way back home. The father responds with a very considerate loving tone and gets his son on a train home. The narrator finds out that his father to once run away from home and symbolizes a unique experience shared with father and son. The narrator relationship with his father in “My Oedipus Complex” is a distinction in which the character analyzes his father as someone who alienates both the narrator and the mother. The mother seems to be drawn to the father with a fetish of pleasing him. The narrator sort of rebels against her mother’s insecurity towards the father and reacts in a disrespectful manner to his father. The child is longing for a healthy relationship with his father but soon gets over it and reacts freshly back to his father. Suddenly due to the narrator being fed up with the lack of respect given by his father, the father comes at peace and at more respect for his son at the end of the story. The narrator’s relationship with his family members represents a concept of manhood in how each story shows growth in the narrator due to his family’s relations. A poor relation with one family member throws off the consistency of the family in which the narrator experiences. Through the narrator’s experiences and on how everything works out for the narrator in all three of the stories, the narrator matures and creates a better understanding of his life and family. A lesson is learned almost through each narrator experience of views of respect the narrator has for his family and how his family’s actions affect his view on life and how the narrator will go about things. A true sense of dignity is brought out through the narrator by learning from actions and experiences in which his family plays that entire role. In conclusion, Frank O’Connor bases each story off his own life experiences with a strong-willed rigorous mother who acted as head enforcement for Frank O’Connor. In his three short stories, it shows how the respect level for his mother was high, but at the same time a sense of disappoint in his mothers actions towards O’Connor. In the stories, O’Connor expresses a true sorrow on the relationship of the narrator and mother. The relationship between O’Connor and his father is distant and the short stories can show that O’Connor had a longing for his father. The stories signified how the narrator and father’s relationship struggled due to the father being such a distant figure to the narrator. The narrator can be showed as a little frustrated because of a connection the narrator feels he has with his father, but the connection just cannot get through. Frank O’Connor demonstrates in these three short stories a concept of taking his personal life and reflecting it through his short stories.