Academic literature on the topic 'Necrophilous'

碩士<br>國立臺灣大學<br>外國語文學研究所<br>105<br>Flannery O’Connor’s literary world is filled with conflicts between mothers and their children which usually end up with unfortunate incidents, unexpected loss or violent death. The mutual destructiveness of these interdependent family members indicated attraction to and longing for death, a state of ultimate certainty which ends the unbearable human sufferings. Applying Erich Fromm’s analysis of necrophilia and mother fixation, this paper is set to survey the necrophilious traits of mother figures and the love-fear complex of their children derived from the shadow of death in O’Connor’s short stories. Suppressed by the mottos of southern womanhood, the mothers appear to be more than caring and loving for their children. However, the underlying motivation for their unconditional love is often desire for the power to control and self-satisfaction. Obsessed with their children’s illness, failure and unfavorable development, these mothers strangled the younger generation’s potential for growth, success and real joy. Fantasies of the glorious past, power to dominate and possession of material things provide a simulative certainty when physical death is too much to ask. With the suffocating power of love, these necrophilious mothers O’Connor portrayed use the allure of the past and manipulative “guilt-trick” to render their children powerless and dependent. Diminished by the mothers’ love and protection as well as death-obsessed nature, their adult offspring become insensitive to changes and opportunities in life, leading their lives in need and in fear of the mothers’ love and protection. Under the influence of their necrophilious life-givers, these children are often physically unhealthy, emotionally alienated and socially isolated. Entrapped by their dependence on their mothers and often tested by their care-givers’ guilt-trick, these children seek violence as a self-defensive mechanism. In this paper, Fromm’s notions of necrophilia and mother fixation are applied to explore the love-hate relationship between a necrophilious mother and her daughter in “Good Country People”, the death-seeking wish fulfillment of a nostalgic motherly figure in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the violent competition between sibling-like children for the love and attention of a disaster-loving mother in “The Comforts of Home”, the struggle to matter in the strange present of a pair of past-fixated mother and son in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and the extended shadow of death within the alternative mother-son stories from “The Geranium” to “Judgement Day”. Writing in the era of shattered faith in God and in life, O’Connor depicts the necrophilious orientation among characters lacking the power to shield against the sense of uncertainty as the world changes. The violence they partake, however, is a paradoxical proof of their love of death as well as their desire to confront the enervating struggle for life.