Coming of Age Theme Analysis

In “My Oedipus Complex,” O’Connor points out what is perhaps the most painful side effect of one’s coming of age, mapping out the gradual demise of a child’s innocence and self-importance. Larry lives his first five years in a state of childhood innocence, which his father upends after returning from World War I. In order to remain the center of his mother’s universe, Larry attempts to overthrow his father by besting him in a game of adulthood he does not yet know how to play. After Larry learns to imitate his father’s manly habits of shaving and smoking pipes, he experiences another growth spurt when his baby brother, Sonny, is born. Still an adolescent, Larry is not yet a man once the story ends. However, Larry is far from the callow juvenile he was at the age of five. While he navigates the changing relationships he has with his mother, father, and baby brother, Larry slowly realizes that he is changing, too.

Before beginning his slow coming of age, Larry lives in a state of childish ignorance. When mentioning his father’s visits home during wartime, Larry remarks, “Like Santa Claus he came and went mysteriously.” Not only does Larry believe in Santa Claus, but he is also at a stage in life in which much of the world is still unknown to him—including the gravity of his father’s occupation as a soldier. Larry also shows his naiveté when he expresses his desire for the family to have a baby. He remarks that a baby would “brighten the home” (as if it were simply décor rather than a life-changing responsibility) and then suggests that families obtain babies by purchasing them, which shows his profound innocence of human reproduction. Furthermore, Larry’s interests are characteristic of his age (“trams, ships, and horses”), and he cannot fathom why his father would not be equally interested in them. “I had never met anyone so absorbed in himself as he seemed,” Larry says of his father’s interest in adult things like talking to men his own age. The irony of this is lost on Larry, as he is acting incredibly self-absorbed by expecting his father to tailor his interests to suit his five-year-old son’s. 

However, as he adapts to his father’s presence, Larry begins to see the world in a more complex way. In part, this comes from Larry’s mother beginning to be honest with him about serious matters. While earlier in the story she shoos Larry away by saying vaguely that she and his father have “business to discuss,” Larry’s mother eventually explains their precarious financial situation by admitting that Larry’s father needs to earn money or else they’ll have to beg. In a surprising act of maturity, Larry reacts to this by vowing to do his best not to jeopardize his family’s finances, showing him taking responsibility for his part in the family. As Larry sheds his childhood innocence, he also expects his parents to treat him as a mature person. While he doesn’t register much objection to punishments earlier in the story, the first time his father spanks him, he considers it to be an indignity to which he should no longer be subjected. In addition, when his father brings tea for himself and his mother but none for Larry, Larry feels that he, too, should have a cup, since he wants to be “treated as an equal in my own home.” Of course, Larry is not an equal—he is a child—but his increasing demands for respect and consideration show him growing up.

Perhaps Larry’s most significant maturation is his gradual development of empathy. When Larry first begins his narration, he frequently treats his feet (dubbed “Mrs. Left” and “Mrs. Right”) as invisible friends with whom he discusses his thoughts. However, by the end of the story, references to Mrs. Left and Mrs. Right have stopped entirely, suggesting that Larry is not as concerned with having his own thoughts mirrored back at him, and instead he might be growing more interested in the thoughts of others. This is confirmed when Larry demonstrates that he is mature enough to empathize even with his sworn enemy, his father. Throughout the story, there are hints that Larry is beginning to understand his father’s emotions, such as his realization that his father’s anger comes partially from his jealousy of Larry. Towards the end of the story, though, Larry finds himself not only able to understand his father’s emotions, but also to treat him with empathy and care. When Larry’s father (displaced by the infant) gets in bed with Larry, Larry contemplates this odd situation and realizes the parallel between his own experience and his father’s: “After turning me out of the big bed, he had been turned out himself.” Suddenly able to empathize with his father’s plight, Larry cares for him: he strokes his father, comforts him, and even chooses not to react when his father “snarls.” Just as Larry is now able to make room in his bed for his father, he is able to make room for a larger understanding of the world and his role in it. As he no longer has the luxury of viewing himself as the center of his household, Larry—like all children—gradually becomes less self-involved, more empathetic, and more adult.