My Oedipus Complex Study Guide

Frank O’Connor (pseudonym of Michael Francis O’Donovan) was born and raised in the Irish city of Cork, where he attended primary and secondary school. The only child of Michael and Minnie O’Donovan, O’Connor grew up in a tumultuous household. Michael O’Donovan Sr. was a former soldier whose severe alcoholism prevented him from holding down a job after leaving the army. Despite having bitter feelings towards his father, O’Connor had a close relationship with his mother, who cared for Frank and provided for the family by cleaning houses. O’Connor worked as a librarian before becoming a member of the Irish Republican Army in 1918, which resulted in his imprisonment between 1922 and 1923. Upon his release, O’Connor became somewhat of a Renaissance man. In addition to working as an Irish teacher and librarian, O’Connor served as a broadcaster for the Ministry of Information for the United Kingdom during World War II, as well as a member of the Abbey Theatre Board of Directors. After publishing several works, including his short story “Guests of the Nation” (1931), O’Connor began to acquire fame as a writer. Following the separation from his first wife, Welsh actress Evelyn Bowen, O’Connor accepted American university teaching positions at Northwestern (where he met his second wife, Harriet Rich) and Harvard. While in the United States, O’Connor became known for his short stories, many of which were featured in The New Yorker. O’Connor returned to Ireland in 1961, prompted by a stroke he suffered while teaching at Stanford University. A year later he was granted a Doctor of Letters from Trinity College, Dublin. Frank O’Connor continued to write until his death, dying from a heart attack in Dublin on March 10, 1966.

World War I came at a time of unrest for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Demanding an autonomous government, Irish nationalists had been fiercely campaigning for the Irish Home Rule movement since 1870. After the first two bills failed to pass, advocates for Irish self-government introduced the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912. This spurred a standoff between unionists and nationalists known as the Home Rule Crisis, which came to a temporary halt two years later with the arrival of the First World War. Despite its domestic turmoil, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland unified to join the Allied Forces against the Central Powers. Bills for Irish independence passed not long after the start of World War I, but were not to be executed until the war was over. When Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and other Allied Nations signed the Treaty of Versailles, marking the end of the war. The tension within the country came to a head a mere two months later, when the Irish Republic introduced a Declaration of Independence. This ignited the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), in which Frank O’Connor served as a member of the Irish Republican Army. In “My Oedipus Complex,” Larry mentions accompanying his mother to mass at St. Augustine’s, signaling that his family is Catholic. In the context of the country’s political struggle, most Catholics were members of the Irish nationalist party, a minority movement that supported Irish unification. Protestants, on the other hand, mostly belonged to the unionist party, who wanted to prevent Northern Ireland from separating from the United Kingdom.  

After World War I, many modernist literary works shed light on some of the darker aspects of humanity. “My Oedipus Complex” directly confronts this, depicting a family who grapples with repercussions of the war. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922) is another renowned example, thought to be a radical exploration of society’s struggle to reclaim its integrity after the First World War. Fellow Irishman William Butler Yeats also produced reflections on a post-war society with his poems “The Second Coming” (1920) and “A Prayer for My Daughter” (1921).  Though not an exact replica, “My Oedipus Complex” echoes some of the familial problems O’Connor experienced in his own life. O’Connor depicted these struggles in his biographies, An Only Child (1961) and My Father’s Son (1968). The title was taken from Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, first used in his book on the stages of psychosexual development, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). The roots of this reference extend even further, as Freud named his theory after Sophocles’ ancient tragedy Oedipus Rex (first performed around 429 BC). The epitome of literary father-son conflicts, Oedipus Rex tells the story of a man who kills his father and sleeps with his mother. O’Connor was a modernist, whose style was largely characterized by its introspectiveness. In “My Oedipus Complex,” the narrator demonstrates a high level of self-awareness by relating his childhood experiences to the reader. This narrative style echoes the stream of consciousness technique used in other modernist works including Mrs. Dalloway, a novel published by English writer Virginia Woolf in 1925. Like O’Connor’s short story, Mrs. Dalloway contains a great deal of reflection, as it depicts a woman recalling events of her younger years.