English

2/9/2018

Forum 1 – English (Fall 2018)

In a post of 250 words, respond to ONE of the following questions. You must provide concrete examples from the literature and the film to back up your analysis. Make specific, pointed references to the texts to support your argument. (I recommend quoting the readings and film dialogue, where necessary, for specific support). You may also make reference to our class discussion or the reading by Jeffrey Weinstock. Please note that your comment can also be, in part, a reply to someone else's comment, as long as it fulfills the above criteria and answers the question. A word of advice: make your focus specific and small; do not try to give a general overview of the text and/or film. Get into a specific example, and draw that out to a consideration of the texts at large. Please identify at the beginning of your post which question you are answering in parentheses. For example: “(Question #2).”

1) As we discussed, Emily Dickinson’s poem, “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—” is a way of looking at the mind through the lens of Gothic, where mental and physical spaces collapse and interconnect. Choose a key scene in which Psycho relates to this aspect of Dickinson’s poem. What is the “superior spectre” in Psycho and how, where, or in what situations does it manifest?

2) As we discussed, “The Fall of the House of Usher” can be read as an elaborate, melodramatic staging of the return of the repressed in the form of numerous desires (both wonderful and terrible) and conflicts that the characters feel. Compare this aspect of “Usher” to Psycho. If we read Psycho as a similar staging of the return of the repressed, what specific desires and/or conflicts arise?

3) Both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “A Rose for Emily” deal with witnesses who narrate the story as an attempt to explain mysterious or even inscrutable events and actions. In both works, the final outcome may raise more questions than it answers. Psycho, too, is constructed as a kind of mystery as it unfolds, with a final explanation at the end. What further questions remain at the conclusion of Psycho, despite the film’s attempt to “wrap up” the mystery? To which of the stories is Psycho more similar in this respect?

4) “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “A Rose for Emily,” and Psycho all feature somewhat peculiar “couples” and couplings. As you watch Psycho, think about the interaction of characters based upon their gender (or the gender traits associated with them). To which of the stories are these interactions more similar in Psycho? Single out specific details for your support.

39 Comments

Meghan Rulli

6/9/2018 09:39:55 am

To question #4: In my opinion, I think that Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” is more similar to the interactions and couplings in Psycho than “A Rose for Emily” because, while “A Rose for Emily” does have some family issues tied into it, it’s more of a romantic failure, while “The Fall of the House of Usher” is all about the Usher family and their issues. Psycho deals with the Bates family and their repressed issues as well. It’s very evident that the relationship between Madeline and Roderick can be found within the relationship between Norman and his mother. While Norman feels as though he needs to protect his mother from the visitors (even though she’s in his own mind), he also needs to repress her, hide her away down in the cellar, which can be seen as physically repressing her. Roderick loves his sister, but also wants to repress her and the family tradition that the Usher’s have. It should also be noted how similar the personality traits of Roderick and Norman are. In “The Fall of the House of Usher’” Roderick is mentally ill, and gets even more ill after the death of his sister. As a hobby, he paints, plays guitar and reads. Norman is also mentally ill, he gets worse after his mothers death. He is haunted by his own mind just like Roderick, and has a ‘hobby’ in bird-stuffing. Madeline and Norman’s mother are both portrayed as ghostly figures, we never really see Norman’s mother in the movie, and in the story, we never really interact with Madeline, therefore the audience never really knows if they even exist or not. In Psycho, Norman and his mother, in essence, are holding together the Bates motel, a motel that’s run down with very little business, while the House in “Usher”, both the house and family, are held together by Roderick and Madeline. Roderick, Madeline and Norman are both the last ones running their ‘homes’. One can’t live without the other, therefore they make 1 whole person. Figuratively, in Psycho, Norman and his mother DO make up one whole person, since Norman’s mother is in Norman’s head. Although there are a lot of similarities to Psycho and “A Rose for Emily”, one in specific where Norman’s mother’s bed has an imprint of her body in it, and in “A Rose for Emily”, there’s a imprint of Emily in the bed next to Homer, I do believe that the coupling between Roderick and Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Norman and his mother in Psycho are much more similar.

Hannah Di Francesco

6/9/2018 11:09:32 pm

(Question 1)
In this movie, Norman is obviously haunted by his mother. Even though she died ten years ago, she still lives on in his mind, in a way influences every single one of Normans decisions. She pressures him in his mind, and he is never alone. The house is also her in a way, as she is the first character we see there, through the window. Even though it might be Norman walking by, he is dressed as her and, in a way, she is the one walking by. So, Norman can never really get rid of her, and due to her being in his mind, he doesn’t want to, not anymore. Although he killed her, out of jealousy, he still needs her and this is why he keeps her alive in his mind. This is how we can see that the physical space of the house and Normans mental are connected, through the mother, they collapse into each other and become the same thing. The key scene to represent this is when Norman and his mother are yelling at each other, at this point in the movie, we do not know that the mother is dead, so in our minds, and Marion’s, she truly exists. The mother, in the space of the house, comes alive, even though it is through Norman and interacts with him. This is why he is mostly haunted by her there, because no one else is there to see that he is in fact talking to himself. There is no chamber in the movie, but Norman is haunting himself, with the presence of his mother criticizing ever single thing he does. As Jeffrey Weinstock says: “Gothic works almost inevitably shade toward being allegories of human insufficiencies”. Norman feeling like he was not being enough started when his mother had a lover. Norman probably felt that he was being overlooked and was not enough so he killed both of them. This way he could keep his mother all to himself. After, he could not make his own decisions for himself, so his mother stepped in, this time from his mind, and continued to control him. So, even as an adult, Norman Bates, was not good enough to take care of himself and the motel, he needed his mother to guide him. This is why he kept her to haunt him, even as a grown man.

Julia Prud'Homme

7/9/2018 09:52:39 am

Question 1
To begin, I think one of the biggest scenes in which “Psycho” relates to “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted” by Emily Dickinson is when Norman Bates picks up his dead mother’s skeleton and carries her into the fruit cellar. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, she creates a parallel between physical space and mentality, which she compares to a house. Like Hannah said, Norman is very clearly haunted by his mother’s murder, which he committed. I think he’s so morally lost without her severity and cruelty that he creates her in his mind. I think the scene where he’s bringing her skeleton downstairs is essentially a physical representation of his last attempt at getting rid, at least momentarily, of the murderous personality inside him that is repressing his wishes. It’s the physical version of repressing something, he takes his mother’s body that is upstairs and puts her somewhere in the basement behind a closed door, because he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He doesn’t want to be her in this moment. It reminds me of the line in the poem “He bolts the door, overlooking a superior spectre more near”. In this scene, he literally bolts the door, putting his mother “away”, but he doesn’t realize that the “superior spectre”, is himself, because he becomes what he locked up downstairs: his mother. In Dickinson’s poem, physical space is compared to a house. In “Psycho”, I think this particular scene is exactly that. Norman Bates’ home is a physical representation of his mind. When his mother is upstairs, she’s very active in his head, haunting him. When he puts her downstairs, the repressed mother is initially hidden, but ultimately comes out stronger, this time taking over his entire personality. She is now the sole inhabitant of the house, and so of his mind.

Kelly Rosialda

8/9/2018 06:11:04 pm

(Question 4 )

Norman Bates’ relationship with his mother is quite similar to the one we analyzed in Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher” between Roderick and Madeleine.
It is clearly apparent that both characters have strong connections to their “other halves”, so much so that they become the same person as both couplings only had each other to depend on.
We learn in Usher that “the deceased [Madeleine] and himself [Usher] had been twins, and that the sympathies of scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them” (p.211). In other words, hence being twins, Madeline and Usher had created an eternal link. Roderick used this bond to his advantage as he projected a lot of himself unto her, wanting to forget his existent issues, eventually turning them into a single person in two different bodies. In Psycho, Norman had the same problem. He himself wasn’t able to distinguish who he was without the presence of his dead mother “so he began to speak for her, give her half his life, so to speak”. This reincarnation can also be seen in Usher in an equivalent way. Both woman, far more impregnable than both men, figuratively come back to life affecting the main characters which inevitably leads to death : The death of a bloodline and an identity.

All in all, Roderic and Norman not wanting to accept defeat, prefer to repress and be blind towards their issues and problems. Expressing themselves through their own emotions isn’t of their knowledge nor was it socially acceptable for their gender. Woman, in the other hand, can freely express vulnerability as it was a feminine trademark in society. Being able to vent out their feelings, they’re less prone to repression. “Repression doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and emotions. Rather, it gives them force by making them the organizers of our current experiences [...] ” (p.12-13 from Lois Tyson’s). This can explain why in both scenarios the man are seen as weaker and are destined to death and the woman seem much more indomitable.

Marilena Mignacca

8/9/2018 10:34:54 pm

(Question 1)
A lot of Dickenson’s poem has to do with the whole situation of Norman and his mother, how “Far safer, of a midnight meeting external ghost than its interior confronting- that cooler host” represents the idea that Norman confronting his mother in his mind would be more frightening than meeting a real ghost. Her whole poem is about how we think we’re scared of exterior surroundings but in fact we’re more afraid of what’s going on inside us and how we can’t control it. This is exactly Norman’s situation; he could get rid of a body or talk his way out of the detectives’ questions, but when it comes to him dealing with his mother, he simply is too afraid to control her (his fear) so instead she (fear) controls him. A specific scene that really highlights the poem’s idea is the scene where Norman puts his mother’s corpse in the cellar, like Julia mentioned. When he puts his mother in the basement it’s as if he’s finally trying to take control, he’s attempting to repress another horrible murder. For the humanities essays, Victoria pointed out how the second floor in the house, represented the superego. The superego (Norman’s mother) stood at the top, judging and commanding, which is what the superego does. So, when Norman put his mother in the cellar, he was making a point to her that he was trying to gain a little more control. However, what he didn’t realize was that he was completely in denial of what the real superior spectre was; himself. All he was doing was repressing a skeleton from getting out and going and kill more people, when in fact he was the one that was doing the killing but unconsciously.

Jenna Howor

8/9/2018 10:49:26 pm

(Question 2)
I believe that the movie Psycho could also be seen as melodramatic staging of the return of the repressed. It can be interpreted that Norman is repressing the time when he murdered his mother and her lover because he felt abandoned by her and was jealous of the attention she was giving her lover instead of him. As much as Psycho can be seen as the return of the repressed, it also demonstrates the battle for control going on within Norman. The mother and Norman’s original personalities are battling within Norman’s mind and in the end the mom’s personality proves to be victorious. “The mom’s side would go wild if he was attracted to women because he was so pathologically jealous of the her, he assumed that she was also jealous of him.”

Norman is incredibly wrapped up in his struggle to repress his actions that “when reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he dressed up… He tried to be his mother, and now, he is.” He was incapable of coming to terms with what he had done and he could not let go of her, so he attempted to keep her alive through himself. “He began to think and speaks for her, give her half, sometimes all of his life, so to speak.”

Similarly, in The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick is desperately trying to repress the “diseased branch of himself”, in order to accomplish this he attempts to murder his sister. This to him, seems to be the only way he can escape his sister, who he feels is holding him back as well as his perverse desire to partake in incestuous matters. “And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it” (although this is a quote from a tale told within the Usher story, it still explains how Roderick feels the need to repress his sister). Norman is trying to repress his actions of killing his mother, as well as the guilty side of himself that misses his mother and had such a great love for her; he even states “a boy’s best friend is his mother”.

Jenna Howor

9/9/2018 11:55:05 am

The quote from The Fallen House of Usher can be found on pg.14

Ameera Kabir

9/9/2018 02:09:21 am

[Q.3]

I believe that the “coupling” between Emily and father in “A Rose for Emily” is similar to that of Norman and his mother. Emily’s father is the cookie-cutter image of the domineering patriarchal figure, and Emily is the delicate and weak-willed woman who is rendered submissive by him. The narrator describes their relationship as a tableau pictured as “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” [p.4] Emily had no freedom of her own when her father was alive which is fact that everyone in her small town is aware of. He took away any chances of companionship by driving away all her suitors. She was severely isolated to the point that her only friend (forget lover) was her caretaker.

Norman, on the other hand, is the antithesis to Emily’s father in the sense that he displays stereotypically feminine qualities. When he first dined with Marion, he was meek and timid, the conversation flowed awkwardly and consisted mostly of Marion humoring Norman. He lacked the assertiveness that was demanded of men during that period (like Sam, the man who was ready to rescue his damsel in distress, Marion). Mrs. Bates better resembles Emily’s father, because of how commanding she was. We can assume that Norman’s conversations with his “mother” are inspired by actual conversations with his mother, When “she” yells: “Or do I have to tell her, cause you don't have the guts? Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?”, she is acknowledging Norman’s meekness and is taking advantage of that to further push him to do what she wants. If he does not do what she wants, he’s a coward. If he does, she wins. She was and remains an oppressive presence in her son’s life. Norman was/is unable to disobey her due to the emotional hold she had onto him, just as Emily was unable to disobey her father due to the emotional (and physical) hold he had on her.

However, a difference between them that I find interesting is that when Norman killed Marion, it was his “mother”’s will; yet, I believe that when Emily killed Homer, it was her last attempt to escape her father. Regardless, it is apparent to just what extent their parents had on both their lives. The following quote illustrates the fate of both Emily and Norman as they both refuse to acknowledge the death of their parents’: “[...] we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” [p.4] Both Norman and Emily cling onto the memories of their parents; Norman with the skeleton in his closet, and Emily with her childhood drawing of her father still framed for everyone to see.

Chris Morgan Arseneau

9/9/2018 03:01:16 am

Forum 1 – English (Question #3)

Psycho holds many similarities to “The Fall of the House of Usher.” For starters, the mansion in the latter bears some resemblance to the house in the former. Both the mansion and the house contain basements which can be viewed as symbolical of the dark, inaccessible portion of our personalities, or in other words, the id. The id is frequently viewed as chaotic and unreasonable like the murders committed in these works. The basements of the two old gothic structures in these works are used in these stories as physical storages for unlawful urges of the psyche. Norman Bates transfers his mother’s skeleton to the basement and Roderick Usher entombs his beloved sister Madeline in the vault of the mansion while she’s still alive. In one of his lectures about psychoanalytic criticism, Freud remarks, “we keep the repressed repressed in order to avoid knowing what we feel we can’t handle knowing.” (page 15). Norman and Roderick desperately attempt to suppress in themselves what they’ve done so that it becomes and remains in the unconscious.

In Psycho, Norman hears his mother’s voice in his mind. What’s more, when driving out of town with the stolen money, Marion also hears voices. Her super ego punishes her through feelings of guilt. Likewise, Roderick mentions that he hears voices that others don’t hear. His super ego torments him for burying his sister alive.

Furthermore, much like Norman Bates, Roderick Usher is tremendously psychologically disturbed. A certain willingness to investigate the hysterical male is made evident in both Psycho and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

The ending of Psycho raises more questions than it answers. Why end the story there? Why end with Marion’s car being hauled out of the swamp instead of Norman’s spine-chilling smile. In my opinion, the car scene is too abrupt. I think it’s nonessential and quite frankly, dull. I understand how the scene can be viewed as necessary for indicating the reestablishment of order, but things haven’t been truly ‘straightened out.’ Yes, the police have arrested Norman and they’ve found Marion’s car, only things can never go back to the way they used to be. Even though Norman has been arrested, the murders he’s committed cannot be undone. Marion is still dead. Order may have been reestablished, but for what use? And to what extent?

Vanessa Amar

9/9/2018 12:19:52 pm

Question 3

The ending of “A Rose for Emily” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” are incredibly similar. Though they don’t end on a cliffhanger, the reader has an unshakable feeling that they do since the action and intrigue climbs and the story ends before it can go back down.
Each of these stories have been wrapped up, the culprit is either in custody or dead. However, in all three works we have a dreadful feeling that it simply does not end there. We have this feeling because the story ends before the dust can settle and because we would like more answers and explanations.
Psycho is similar to those two stories in many respects, especially “A Rose for Emily” since in both cases the protagonists have managed to keep the skeletons in their closet, which in both cases are literal skeletons, hidden from the public and only appeared to them as being somewhat odd, but not murderous. There are also similarities in the way the loved ones died and how they refused to believe the deaths.
That being said Psycho differs from the two literary works greatly because Norman has not died. The creepy smile and chilling monologue at the end has made that extremely clear; he is alive and somewhat well. This is why I disagree when Chris says that the scene in which they pull out the car is nonessential. I believe that scene gave the impression that the havoc that Norman wreaked did not end just because he was caught. This leads to questions that aren’t about the past, but rather about the future, questions such as “does Norman kill again?” And “does he ever become fully himself again?”

Larissa Szaniszlo-Luty

9/9/2018 01:32:24 pm

Question #4

In my opinion, the movie “Psycho” and the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” both brought to light some interesting character interactions and ultimately challenged what was considered to be “socially acceptable” at the time.

In the movie “Psycho,” the antagonist, Norman Bates, had always felt repressed by his overbearing mother. She had apparently gone to great lengths to keep him feeling unworthy and unlovable – especially when she began to show interest in a new man in her life (Norman’s step-father) and Norman decided that he must kill them both in order for him to flee from her shadows. This event caused Norman to feel stronger and less reliant on his mother but ultimately caused his demise at the end of the film. His guilt brought his mother back and she ‘forced’ her son to act upon her prior wishes of pushing women out of his life by killing them.

In the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Madeline was similarly repressed by her twin brother, Roderick for when she died, in an attempt to bury the family’s perversions, Usher had locked her corpse in a dungeon. However, like Norman’s mother, she managed to free herself and haunt Roderick, as well. “Then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.” (Page 216, The Fall of the House of Usher) This quote demonstrates that Madeline managed to victimize her brother – she wasn’t as weak as she originally seemed and neither was Norman’s mom who he had once described as “as harmless as a stuffed bird.”

Madeline reminded me of Norman’s mother because, like Meghan said, “they were portrayed as ghostly figures” meaning that they were always hidden away and forced into the background. Both women were repressed by the men in their lives by physically being taken out of the equation, so to speak, however, by being repressed, both women were able to return since the “dominating” men were actually quite weak minded. Perhaps the fact that both Norman and Roderick tried so hard to fit into society’s gender norms (strong, showing no emotions), they unwillingly allowed their questionable actions to tear them up inside; having no one to talk to caused them to act out and do things they normally wouldn’t. Instead of facing their inner demons they allowed them to grow, causing the death of Roderick and Norman, and the return of the dead mother.

Angele Wen

9/9/2018 03:13:45 pm

Question 1

I agree with Hannah, that the mother is haunting Norman's mind. The chamber in Emily Dickinson's poem is replaced by Norman's thoughts. We understand that he was jealous of her lover, when he said: “a son is a poor substitute for a lover”. Since Norman couldn't have her heart as a lover, he didn't want anyone else to have it, so he killed both his mother and her man. Yet, he kept her body to feel her presence and to cover up what he has done. Norman's guilt made him ill and his murder came back to haunt him. When the mother was still alive, she scared him with her violence in words and actions. After her death, Norman became her, but worse. He represses his mother and dislikes her personality, but unconsciously, he still needed her by his side as a mother figure. Her ghost in him is what Emily Dickinson describes as the “cooler host”.

The passage “Assassin hid in our Apartment” can be interpreted as a mental and a physical space in the movie. Mentally, the assassin would be the mother's mind and the apartment would be the body of Norman. When he kills and makes bad decisions, his mother takes over and violence comes. When Norman is himself, the mother disappears, or in other words, hidden. Physically, the apartment would be the house with no doubts and Norman would be the assassin, even though he is mentally ill. I would say “hidden” also applies to him, because sometimes he appears out of nowhere like he has always been there. For example, the scene where he enters the basement dressed like the mother to kill Marion's sister. No one knows how he got there so fast, nor where he got the knife and the dress and still got there faster than Sam. It almost feels like Norman predicted all this would happen and prepared everything in advance.

Patricia Brassard

9/9/2018 04:21:38 pm

(Question #2)
There are a lot of parallels to be made between ‘’Fall of the House of Usher’’ and Psycho. The two stories are perfect examples of the staging of the return of the repressed. Both families are dysfunctional, where the children are a product of their maltreatment, and in both stories the last scene is the revelation of the uncanny truth. In ‘’Fall of the House of Usher’’ the last scene where Madeleine, in her bloody white robe, holds her brother in a deadly embrace as the house crumbles is the perfect spectacle for any reader. It is comparable to the last scene in Psycho, where Lila discovered Norman’s mom is actually and has been dead. Norman then enters, dressed as his mother with a knife and Sam, Marion’s lover, holds him back. This dramatic scene reveals the explanation behind the murders. Both Roderick Usher and Norman Bates, suffer immensely from their repression. For instance, Bates sleeps next to his mother so often there is an imprint on the mattress. Moreover, he gets so jealous when his mom finds a lover, he rather poison her and her partner than outgrow their abusive mother-child bond. He is dependent of his mother the same way the Usher twins are attached, Roderick feels like he will die if Madeleine does. Both relationships are toxic and have an uncanny sexual twist. Norman hates his mother as much as Roderick hates Madeleine because the women are reminders of their abuse and pain, but even in death the women exerce their power and the men can't seem to escape them, to the extent they feel like they need them. Roderick waits for Madeleine obsessively (he knows she's alive) and Norman will recreate his mother to keep her living. As Kristopher Woofter said in class, the ending of ‘’The Fall of House of Usher’’ feels like both a burial and a rebirth. The idea that Rodrick dies or goes in Madeleines womb at the end of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story parallels with the idea Norman recreates his mother womb because he craves her presence (and authority) so much. The search for a womb and desire to be reunited with one’s mother is flagrant in both stories.

David Boghen

9/9/2018 04:33:29 pm

(Question #4)

I, as Ameera did, drew comparisons between the relationship of Emily and her father, and that of Norman and Mrs. Bates. I agree that the father and Mrs. Bates play the role or have the gender traits of a strict and domineering parental figure, while Emily and Norman are both seemingly helpless to the controlling will of their lone parent. What I would like to emphasize is that not only did that will not disappear after their death; it seemed to become even stronger. In Emily’s case, when Homer Barron leaves her, she is so stricken with guilt for having disobeyed her father that she stays inside the house for nearly six months. As is stated in Part IV, “That quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.” Therefore, though she tries to escape her father’s will after he dies by becoming intimate with Homer, she happens to fall for a man who is “not a marrying man,” as he says of himself. In Norman’s case, when he kills his mother, she goes from a “clinging, demanding woman,” to a murderous engine that instigates these fits of jealous rage that result in the deaths of Marion and the detective. If his mother would have been alive, I doubt that she would have felt the need to murder Marion after one conversation with Norman. Because Norman feels guilty for having feelings for her that he thinks his mother would not have approved of, he must tend to that guilt by doing away with the one that causes it, and because he cannot kill his mother again, he must kill Marion. Therefore, neither Norman nor Emily were able overcome the overwhelming influence that their parent had on them. Emily attempted to find love in Homer Barron but ended up deciding that the only way that they would be together is if she killed him, so the father got his way anyways. Norman was infatuated with Marion, but couldn’t manage to withhold the jealous urge that the mother side of his brain felt and murdered her, too. Though their children tried to surpass them, they only fell more under the control of their strong-willed parents after their untimely deaths.

Cato Usher

9/9/2018 04:33:47 pm

Being such a quintessentially gothic story, Psycho shares a number of similarities with other classic tales of the genre, more specifically “A Rose for Emily”. Both tales dealing in death and romance, with numerous ties and references to childhood trauma, abuse and the lasting effects they can have on children. In “A Rose”, Emily Grierson struggles with the fear of abandonment, birthed by her father driving away every man she ever showed romantic interest in. This childhood trauma sticks with her, and eventually brings her to murder her husband, who intended on leaving her. The relationship between Grierson and her father reveals an important parellel between “A Rose” and Psycho: both Emily Grierson and Norman Bates are influenced by the way their parents attempt to control their love lives.
At the end of Psycho, the psycho-analyst states that Norman’s reason for killing people, usually attactive women, is that the “Mother” part of his psyche is afraid of being replaced, thus killing any women Norman is attracted to. However, the difference between the cases of Emily Grierson and Norman Bates is that Emily murders her lover out of defiance of her father’s wishes, finally ensuring an enternal romance with Homer Barron, whereas Norman murders Marion Crane out of obedience to his “mother’s wishes”.

Julia Bifulco

9/9/2018 05:05:24 pm

[Question Two]

I believe that Norman Bates feels a type of incestuous desire towards his mother that is similar to the one Roderick Usher feels towards his sister, Madeline. Both men (thankfully) acknowledge that their feelings are unhealthy and that they should not have these desires, but they can’t help themselves. They also deal with their problems in the same way; by (literally) burying them. Roderick buries his sister alive and Norman murders his mother. The two seem to have the same thinking process: they try to find the most permanent solution to their problems, which is one that will never let their feelings resurface.
Norman’s feelings of jealousy and competition for affection resurface but in a warped way; his late mother’s mind almost possesses his own, to the point where, while Norman despised every man in his mother’s life, “she” hates every woman he meets. The same way he killed her lover out of jealousy, “Mrs. Bates” murders Marion—which is shown in the film—and many women before her because “she” doesn’t want to share her son’s attention and affection. While his own feelings cannot return to him, because his mother is dead, his mother’s corpse and the “mother side” of Norman’s brain represent what he tried to repressed and how it did not work. Roderick’s case is similar in the sense that his sister literally breaks out of the coffin that he shut her away in (ie, his desires burst out of the metaphorical box he attempted to lock them in). As is shown in every tale about the return of the repressed, the feelings that Norman tried to rid himself of only came back stronger, almost as if he was holding a spring down and pushing it further and further until it snapped back up with double the force.

Emily Trankarov

9/9/2018 05:09:00 pm

(Question 1)

Indeed, it is natural to come to the conclusion that, as written by my peers, Norman Bates is the main character in Psycho with a haunted mind. However, need not be mentally dysfunctional to be psychologically haunted. Marion is herself a troubled soul. The scene where she is driving in the rain with a sort of smirk, possessed/machiavellian expression on her face while hearing the voices of those she’s duped back in Phoenix is what peaked my interest. That short scene has a lot of subliminal meaning in my opinion. Emily Dickinson wrote in her poem Need Not be a Chamber to be Haunted, “…Ourself behind ourself, concealed should startle most-" and indeed getting a glimpse at Marion’s true self startled me and if she’d seen it with her own eyes would’ve been shocking to her too. The way she is portrayed in that scene implies an interior satisfaction achieved through executing such a perverse action as to stealing $40000 and having deceived people who’ve trusted her, and being proud of that. It’s the lack of remorse and guilt in her eerie grimace which is troubling. What’s odd in this is that other than that specific scene, she’s shown as a relatively sane and well-rounded individual, appart from the crime she’s committed. Therefore, that scene acts a brief window to an alternate personality of Marion’s. “The Brain has Corridors- surpassing Material Place-," and as so, the complexity of the human mind is frightening by its vastness. Perhaps that there, is the “superior spectre” which instills a feeling of dread when thought about. The possibility of there being a twisted version of each and every one of us hidden often in our own unconscious is terrifying, in the same way that seeing Marion depicted under that creepy light created a feeling of uneasiness in me.

Kristopher Woofter

16/9/2018 03:13:10 pm

Emily, this is a keen and incisive post. Marion is easy to overlook in a film that destroys her and replaces her with a very troubled young man. But she occupies fully half of the narrative of the film. While I don't agree that Marion is veering into "alternate personality" territory, there is a wonderful perverseness, not only in her conjuring up the voices of all the men (primarily) who have had her in their sights, but also in the seeming pleasure she takes in thinking about Mr. Lowery's reaction. She turns Lowery into a fool in her thoughts, hence the smile. And there is power here. An analysis of male-female relationships in the film could really use a focus on Marion's voice-over thoughts.

Idia Boncheva

9/9/2018 05:55:08 pm

(Question 2)
In ‘’The Fall of the House of Usher’’, we know that one of the reasons why Roderick decided to bury his sister alive is because he tried to repress his perverse thoughts. He knew that to continue his family’s line, he needed to have an incestual relationship with his sister. He figured that by getting rid of Madeline, who embodies all the dark parts of himself, he would get rid of all these perverse and corrupted images in his mind. Unfortunately, they ended up manifesting as symptoms and Roderick feel deeper in his madness and anxiety.
Similarly, in ‘’Psycho’’, Norman tries to repress his sexual desires towards Marion. His ‘mother’ kills the young woman because she can’t allow another female figure in her son’s life. But we know that in fact, Norman IS his mother and that killing Marion is his attempt at redeeming himself for all his faults and mistakes of the past. An iconic line of the movie is when Norman says to Marion ‘’A boy’s best friend is his mother’’. In other words, nobody can take his mother’s place so as soon as he senses himself falling for someone, he gets rid of them to repress his drive and infidelity.
Inevitably, the repressed will return. What you push away doesn’t really go away. At the end of the day, Norman’s core issue, the unhealthy connection and the guilt he feels for his mother, will still be present, no matter how many girls like Marion he kills. In my opinion, when pushing away external presences out of his life, his solitude comes back in symptoms of solitude and he grows further into his split personality.

Lyna Ikram Bayou

9/9/2018 06:06:58 pm

(Question 4)
In my opinion, the story “A Rose for Emily” shares much more similarities, in regard of characters relationships, with the movie “Psycho” than Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Poe’s story narrates the event of Roderick who’s strongly connected to his sister Madeline, as Norman is to his mother, to the point where, as Hannah mentioned, they make up ONE person (Madeline and Roderick as twins that form one person and Norman and Norma as two minds living in one body). Both pairs only have one another—the Ushers are the last family members and the Bates are alone with the motel.

In “A Rose for Emily”, however, Emily shares similarities with Norman with both her relationship with her father, as well as her relationship with Homer. Emily lived till her thirties under the control of her strict father. Even after their death, she is still under his “power” as his portrait watches over her grave. The townspeople would “remember all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (p.4). Norman’s mother held the same role in his life as Emily’s father. She would forbid him to have relationships with other women and was very controlling and demanding all his life. Furthermore, both Emily and Norman felt the need to keep the people they loved alive. They both kept the corpses in their house, acting as if they were still alive, completely denying their death. Both Emily and Norman had imprints of their loved one on the beds, as if they still alive and sleeping there. I think that this could relate back to a fear of abandonment since “fear of abandonment also plays a role when we fear the death of others” (p.23, Tyson). Although they killed them, the protagonists try to keep them alive in fear of being left alone with nothing else. They were so afraid of Homer and Norma leaving that they’d rather kill him just to have control over their presence in their life. Emily only had Homer and Norman only had Mrs. Bates. Although both stories share multiple similarities with Hitchcock’s movie, I believe the interactions in “Psycho” are more similar and relevant to the story “A Rose for Emily”.

Kristopher Woofter

16/9/2018 03:22:49 pm

Hi, Lyna. Your second paragraph digs deeper than the first, and in so doing, it gets closer to the kind of responses I'd like to see everyone doing. I highlight yours here because you do take the time here to offer more than surface comparisons to the film and story. One thing that would make this even stronger would be to offer follow-up commentary after the two quoted references you make. Even the strongest support can't speak for itself. Had you made further commentary on those well-chosen passages, linking them to the upcoming point, your paragraph would have been fully a model one!

Sophie-Leprohon Watters

9/9/2018 06:30:08 pm

“One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—One need not be a House—The Brain has Corridors—surpassing material Place...—The Body—borrows a Revolver—He bolts the Door—O’erlooking a superior spectre—Or More—” Emily Dickinson

A person doesn’t need a physical object in order to be afraid, the mind creates thoughts (spector) that are far more terrifying (superior) than what we see. Sometimes, as we discussed in class, we place our ‘interior’ problem on something ‘exterior’.
Norman finds it difficult to accept that the root of what troubles him is found inside himself, it's comforting for him to fight against something he can see instead of himself. In his case, his abandonment issues took the form of his mother’s corpse. He was caring and loving toward his mother which is shown when Marion asks him, ‘’And do you go out with friends.’’ He paused and replied with, ‘’Well a boy’s best friend is his mother.’’ Norma clearly had a negative impact on his life, he feels like she is the most important person in the world and places her above everyone else. Recovering her body and acting as if she was still alive was his way of fulfilling what he was missing from her when she was planning on marrying her fiancé. Since he felt she wasn’t caring and loving towards him at that time, he did it himself.
He then goes on by saying ‘’What are you running away from?.. I don’t know, people never run away from anything. The rain didn’t last long did it?’’ This reflects how he is living repressed since people don’t want to talk about what they are running away from and would much rather talk about pleasant things such as the weather. I agree with what Marilena said, ‘’He could get rid of the body or talk his way out of the detectives’ questions, but when it comes to him dealing with his mother, he simply is too afraid to control her (his fears), so instead she (fear) controls him.’’ He is not solving the actual issue (abandonment), but it is diverting the focus on becoming a mother figure for himself.

Sophie-Leprohon Watters

9/9/2018 06:33:22 pm

This is the answer to question 1.

LéAnne Dansereau

9/9/2018 07:15:35 pm

(Question #3)
At the end of the movie, the psychoanalyst explains what he thinks happened and what he understood of his discussion with the murderer. He states that he got all his information from Norman’s mother and he assures that it is who he talked to. Is it really Norman’s mother whom he discussed with? How can we be sure knowing that a person’s voice or behaviors don’t define what is going on in their mind? Another thing that caught my attention is the interrogation of the psychoanalyst when he asks the official in the room if he has any missing person cases. The fact that he indeed has 2 missing person cases, 2 young girls, seemed to unsettle the psychoanalyst because he then mentions Norman’s mother without finishing his sentence. Does he imply that she could have killed those young girls too? Could she have repeated the actions that she did with Marion with perhaps other girls before her? Which actually brings me to my main question, the one that lingers for days after watching the movie: is it or is it not Norman’s mother who killed the investigator and the girls? The monologue of the mother at the end, stating her son’s mental illness, saying “he was always bad” (Psycho), could convince us that it is Norman who would have killed those people. Moreover, the smile at the end and the action of not getting rid of the fly shows that it could all be a misleading façade to hide Norman’s true intentions and make them pass for his mother’s. The ending could lead to both assumptions that Norman is the murder or that his mother is.
Psycho’s way of unfolding the mystery at the end reminds me more of “The Fall of the House of Usher” more than any other story, because it leaves more questions about the past of the characters. In “A Rose for Emily”, the origins of her repressed desires and all her pain is pretty clear to the witnesses of the story, at least in a wide and abstract manner. In Poe’s story, the main character who witnesses everything hasn’t seen his friend in many years, as we can see in this line: “Rodrick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood, but many years had elapsed since our last meeting.” (The Fall of the House of Usher, page 200) He has no way of knowing what really happened in his friend’s past nor what could be the origin to his illness, especially in a time where the main way to communicate was through letters. In a sense, I find Psycho to portrait a similar setting. Norman and his mother lived in the middle of nowhere, with no one to talk to but each other. No one knew their story, because no one knew them at all. They were secluded from the rest of society, same for the characters in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Although the stories’ mysteries unfold at the end and we get a sense of what happened and why it happened, we can never fully understand the pain and the troubles the characters went through because we read the stories through witnesses who have never been fully involved in the lives of the “troubled” and “distressed”.

Kathleen Fabella

9/9/2018 07:43:57 pm

(Question #2)

In relation to the question of specific desires and/or conflicts that is present in the Fall of the House of Usher, it is not wrong to mention the same for the movie Psycho. In the story of Edgar Allan Poe, Roderick wanted to repress his sister Madeline, the feminine side of him which can be a sign of projection; how Roderick projected his issues on Madeline like we’ve discussed in class. But just like the protagonist in this story, Norman Bates experiences as well a part of him that he feels the need to repress which are his sexual desires. As a matter of fact, there are 2 sides of him, the side that has sexual desires which are from his own self and the other that is repulsed by sex. This repulsion of not being able to fulfill that desire of pleasure he feels when encountering women is coming from the “mother-side” of him, in which they’ve mentioned at the end of the movie is because his mother was jealous. So Norman is conflicted by his own desires and his controlling mother that lives inside of him. But Norman feels that he owes so much to his mother because she raised him which justifies why he can’t leave her. Just like Idia mentioned, when Norman felt these sexual feelings, especially when meeting Marion, he felt a kind of shame, as if he betrayed his own mother which explains why he quickly goes back to his house, to his mother, after he was watching Marion through the peephole. An observation I’ve made that’s pretty interesting was how in the scene of him entering his house, after stalking the lady, not knowing how to deal with his feelings, the background music was intense but also calm all at once, reflecting the conflict of his timid and “innocent” self and his violent mom at that very moment. But then, influenced by his mother, he had the mindset that in order to stop feeling this guilt of sexual desires, he felt the need to kill the object (Marion) that caused these urges to rise to the surface.

This could be a also be sign of projection (from the lecture of Psychoanalytic). Just like I’ve mentioned before, Roderick screws the coffin shut as a sign of repression because he has projected all his problems on Madeline. Like Roderick, Norman projects the conflict he encounters of sexual desires and all shameful thinking onto Marion and in result, killing her, thinking it can be settled that way.

Victoria Caputo

9/9/2018 08:50:35 pm

(Question #1)

As Hannah, Julia, Marilena and Angele mentioned in their responses, Norman is haunted by his mother. While I wholeheartedly agree with this, I’d like to focus more on how he is tormented by the duality within himself, which is a result of his mother’s murder. Much like life, what happens in Psycho isn’t simply black and white. Through this film, Hitchcock manages to capture the complexity of the human mind. Norman Bates isn’t 100% evil, just like how no one can be 100% good. We all struggle with inner demons. Emily Dickinson’s line “Far safer, of a Midnight meeting, External ghost, than its interior confronting that Cooler Host.” reflects this idea. There are things far worse than the external forces meant to scare us, and it’s when the forces are internal. These terrifying internal forces are the “superior spectre”. Norman Bates lives in constant battle with himself, fighting off the “evil” inside him that his mother represents. This moral conflict within his mind is shown throughout the film, as we see Norman react to what he thinks his mother has done. Killing Marion is morally wrong, and the audience can see by Norman’s reaction to her death that he knows that. He even tries to subdue his “mother’s” influence by putting her corpse in the cellar, a clear representation of his effort to repress her, as Julia mentioned. As interesting as that scene is, there is another scene that I found represents the haunting duality within Norman in an extremely subtle way. Having already previously seen Hitchcock’s Psycho, I was able to notice certain things during my second viewing in class that I would not have been able to pick up on during my first one. Right before Norman and Marion enter the parlor to eat, there’s a fantastic shot of both characters (the first 33 seconds of this clip: https://vimeo.com/143137850), where Norman’s reflection can be seen in the window. While this can be brushed off as a coincidence, Hitchcock’s use of mirrors and reflections throughout the entire film lead me to believe it isn’t. Hitchcock frames this shot in a way where you see two Normans. As we’ve established, there are two of him, not physically but mentally; he is split into both ends of morality. This shot is a visual representation of the duality that perpetually follows him around, tormenting him. “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted”. Norman isn’t haunted by the physical manifestation of his dead mother or the eerie presence of his childhood home, he is haunted by his own mind. I find it extremely interesting how a simple shot can represent a character’s inner conflict, how Hitchcock shows us something immaterial like Norman’s mind through a physical setting.

Kristopher Woofter

16/9/2018 03:31:39 pm

Victoria! What a great response. Your ideas are clear, concise, specific and extremely well-supported, and you take the time to notice the subtleties and even the inconsistencies in the way Norman is presented. Not only that, your entire argument revolves around the many suggestions of one image from the film which, when discussed in the context of the film's themes, takes on multiple significant meanings. This is a model paragraph for the online forum posts going forward.

Jade Karakaly

9/9/2018 08:56:53 pm

Question 1
Emily Dickinson explains that one and his psycho is a lot scarier than an assassin hidden in his house: ‘’Ourself, behind ourself concealed, should startle most, assassin, hid in our apartment, be horror’s least’’. I instantly thought about Norman Bates while reading this stanza. Indeed, after Bates murdered his mother because he felt like she was too demanding, he got haunted by it because he thought that he wouldn’t be able to manage his life without her strictness and presence. This duality was seen throughout the whole story where Bates would have discussions with his mother, but in reality, he was talking with his mother in his mind, her superior spectre. Norman Bates uses a defense mechanism which is projection by taking out his mother’s ghost from inside his head and humanising it with his mother’s corpse. Like said in the quote at the beginning of the response, having an assassin in our house is less scary that a ghost in our head and this reflects well how Norman Bates took out his mother’s ghost from his head because he was too scared and put it in a object which was her corpse and she became the assassin as he would dress up like her to murder people. I think the key scene where we see the physical and mental spaces collapse is at the end when Bates decides to physically hide his mother—the ghost in his mind that he humanised—in some room in the basement. Unlike what Marilena said, I think that when he decides to hide her, it is as if the defense mechanism disappears because he can’t humanise the ghost that’s in his mind anymore so the mother comes back stronger in his mind to haunt him and we could see it at the end, the last time we see Norman, we see his face being replaced bis his mother’s face as if she came back stronger than ever just like Julia explained at the end of her response.

Doha Ani

9/9/2018 09:39:42 pm

(Question # 3)
I think that the ending of the movie psycho answers part of the questions but arise many others. At the end of the resolution of the case the psychiatric give an explanation about Norman’s behaviours, about his split personality, about how his mother became the leading personality and how come it was not Norman who killed Marion but his mom out of jalousie. But that was the last explanation and not the last scene of movie which was when the police pulled out Marion’s car from the swamp. Well this ending scene makes us wanting to know why did Hitchcock chose to end his movie this way and not to end it with Norman’s smile? He maybe wanted to do a return to normal live in a way, but I personally think that he did it to raises other questions like, is there something else to be found in swamp. Like LéAnne mentioned when the psychiatric asked the police officer if there was any other case he answer that there are two missing girls so the ending instead of closing the story raises other questions just like in the

Fall of The House of Usher where the ending was literally everything crumbling down burying all the answers, leaving the reader with a lot questions, for example when Rodrick buried his sister alive one can only speculate possible answers for instance Emily was everything that he repressed about his family, about his sickness and about his sexual desires. A comparison can be drawn here because in both stories Rodrick and Madeleine were almost one, by their twin link and their resemblance, and in psycho Norman had a split personality and in both stories the link between the two’s was so strong that when one came down the other followed ,for instance in Usher they both died and in psycho they both went to jail, that part of the ending makes the stories even more similar. On the contrary of a Rose for Emily where the ending was self-explanatory and was more like a curtain fall.

Bridget Griffin

9/9/2018 10:07:28 pm

(Question1)
Just like Victoria has said before me, I find that Dickinson’s poem can be best represented by Norman’s duality. Norman, in order to come to terms with the murder of his mother, becomes his mother. That is the “superior spectre” that Dickinson speaks of, that which is much more terrifying than the murderer himself. When Norman finds Marion’s body, there is a moment of grief, but there is no real surprise, no fear. Though the external act of murder is terrifying to the outside world, to Norman, it is a meer symptom of the true beast, his split mind. He could never come to terms with the fact that he killed his own mother, for behind that there are years of being put down by her overbearingness, all leading up to the moment when he finally feels abandoned by her when she finds a new lover. That deep repression of all the pain his mother caused him can never come to the light, because what sort of son would kill his own dear mother? Norman loves his mother so much that he won’t even send her to an asylum, never mind kill her. His mind’s split was therefore caused by the need he had for his overbearing mother to return, the very embodiment of a super-ego when he wears her clothes. I find that the scene that visually represents this the best is when Lila finds the body of Mrs. Bates, understandably screaming in response, and Norman emerges wearing his mother’s clothes and a wig, knife in hand. She has uncovered the repressed, that superior spectre that Norman had tried so hard to hide away, so in comes the distraction, the terrifying yet somewhat laughable distraction of him wearing in the abnormal getup.
To him, running around brandishing a knife is so much easier than coming to terms with reality. If he can become the “Assassin, hid in our apartment,” that “Be horror’s least.”, he feels like he can repaint the past, telling the same story to himself over in over that his mother was the true murderer, not himself. In fact, this may be why his mother finally completely takes over in the end, if the lesser threat could be his eternity, he need no longer worry about the true terror that resides deep within his own mind.

Taina Dushime

9/9/2018 10:18:06 pm

Question 2
It makes no doubt in my mind that there are a lot of similarities between ‘’The Fall of the House of Usher’’ and ‘’Psycho’’ concerning the return of the repressed. Norman Bates and Roderick Usher repress so much memories and thoughts of their own to such extend that they actually don’t believe that those come from them. Bates is repressing the fact that he killed his mother and her partner out of jealousy because he feels terrible guilt. While Usher is repressing his fears, the idea of death and the perverse thoughts of having sexual intercourses with his sister.

They have both selected onto whom they would project these evil thoughts and fears. In both cases, the chosen person is their ‘’other half’’ because not only that person was all they had left, keeping the repressed within those women is the only way to keep them around. What I mean by that is even though Roderick claims he doesn’t want his sister to come back since he’s terrified of her, he does not actually or at least totally want her gone because she’s all he ever had. To be specific, she’s his ‘’tenderly beloved sister’’ (p.204) and ‘’his sole companion for long years’’ (p.204). Norman also feels the exact same way. Even though he killed his mother because he was so angry at her for replacing him, he won’t accept the fact that she’s dead and that’s why he stole her corpse and made her a living character inside of him because she’s all he ever known. By repressing and projecting his anger and self-hatred in/on her, he’s giving her back her mean and evil personality. Therefore, allowing himself to really feel as if she was still by his side, criticizing his every movement. The ‘’expert’’ in the movie also explains that ‘’when reality came too close… he’d dress up’’ and ‘’he’d walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice, he tried to be his mother’’. Which clearly shows he didn’t want her to leave this world. That’s why, at the end of the stories, I believe they die in similar ways because of the return of the repress who finally dominates them. Roderick as Madeline (the repressed) embraces him, taking his whole body under her control and Norman as his mother (the repressed) wins over him and takes control of his mind. Both men wanted to repress the hurtful thoughts and memories they had, but since they were carried by people they couldn’t let go of and desired in every possible way, it created a conflict within them and the repressed won, taking them out of the equation.

Wendy Lopez

9/9/2018 10:53:30 pm

When Emily Dickinson wrote “One need not be a chamber to be haunted—” she expresses that in order to feel “haunted” there is no need for material. This applies to Norman’s guilty feeling towards the murders he committed, more specifically the one of his mother. These events caused him so much trauma and guilt that in order to get rid of it or repress it he chose to act as if nothing happened, thus why he embodied his mother’s way of being to avoid accepting and blaming himself for the cause of her absence. Since she, obviously, played a crucial part of his life whether it be when she was living or when she was in his mind, his mother always seemed to be a big weight on him, since she is constantly by his side. Although he attempts to forget it, this by no means implies that he is guilt free. On the contrary whenever somebody mentions his mother, as Marion did during their dinner together, he acts offended, as if he was being attacked, as soon as she makes a proposition to him on how to avoid being bothered by her. Her name brings back the guilt he feels for killing his own mother which later on causes him anger . Whether gone or present physically, we see that he will never stop being haunted by her since she is not only in his mind and body but the house he lives in is a constant remember of her, even more since everything inside of it is just as she left it before she was killed.

Isabella Martino

9/9/2018 10:58:46 pm

1) Throughout the film, Norman appears to be a very bothered human being. We can see this when he is talking with Marion, and describes to her how much of a burden his ‘sick mother’ is, as well as at the very end when it is revealed Norman has two personalities in his head. This being said, it is only when we further analyze the movie that we see Norman is not bothered, but rather haunted. More specifically, he is haunted by the murder of his mother which he committed, and all the emotions that followed suit. When Norman killed his mother, I do not believe he realized the emotions that would stick with him for the rest of his life. When Emily Dickinson says “ourself, behind ourself concealed, should startle most;” (verse 13-14), it alludes to the split personality Norman created of his mother in his own mind. This split personality symbolizes the emotions of guilt, regret, and fear which Norman constantly feels. Additionally, it is due to these sentiments – and the voice of his mother who projects these feelings – that caused Norman to commit numerous other heinous crimes. In the movie, Dr. Richmond explains that Norman “assumed that she was jealous of him. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild”, which further suggests how Norman was not acting on his own, but acting under the influence of those horrid emotions to commit those crimes. This example shows how Norman was forever haunted; possessed by another part of his own mind and unable to escape once it took control. Furthermore, the scene that I believe clearly showcases what Emily wished to explain when she said “one not need to be a chamber to be haunted” (verse 1), is at the very end when Norman is sitting in his cell. Despite having been caught for his crimes, the voice of his mother continues to overpower his own in his mind. This scene shows how despite being taken away from his home and the Bates Motel – the two places where the murders took place – and his mother’s corpse, he can never truly escape what is haunting him because it lives within him. In a way, Norman’s alter personality of his mother acts like the “superior spectre” Emily refers to in her poem; it is not a physical being but always present. Her personality will always remain in his mind, forever reminding him of what he did to her long ago and what he is capable of doing to others.

Avraham Cymbalist

9/9/2018 11:00:44 pm

Q1: The nameless Emily Dickinson poem relates to Psycho both literally and psychologically. The concept that one’s inner evil is greater than all outside evil forces is explored extensively by Hitchcock in Psycho. In the scene when Norman finds Marion in the shower after “his mother” killed her, we can clearly see the relation to Dickinson’s poem. “Mother” tells Norman that she murdered Marion and Norman immediately rushes to the motel, he thinks that an external evil killed Marion but really he was the one who killed her. This scene also relates to a different line in the poem that says “Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting External Ghost Than its interior Confronting— That Cooler Host”. In Psycho, Norman would rather meet the “external ghost” that is his attraction to Marion than confront his internal psychosis and risk combining the good and the bad (relating to Klein’s theory). The “superior spectre” in Psycho is Norman’s position that makes him live in both his and his mother’s lives. This condition manifests Norman in different ways, it makes him incredibly defensive over his mother and it also creates a fake idea that Norman’s mother is jealous of him and doesn’t let him be with anyone else intimately. It comes out when his mother is challenged in any way, such as when Marion suggests that Norman puts his mother in an institution. It also comes out when Norman’s position is threatened to be exposed, for example, when Sam is trying to get Norman to admit that he murdered Marion for her money.

chloe casarotto

9/9/2018 11:09:30 pm

Question 2:
Some will say that Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, is given a melodramatic staging, much like a play or a movie because of how the story is told and how the characters act throughout the telling. The readers are supposed to see Roderick Usher is a broken man who is torn on the inside and the outside. He tries to repress his sexual urges towards his sister and he fears the future but fails at doing both. The reason some believe that this story is a melodramatic staging is because of the narrators failed attempt at seeing the truth and because of his over-dramatic expressions. This can be seen as melodramatic because of how the everything is described from the “bleak walls-- upon the vacant eye like windows”(Poe 199) to how Roderick Usher’s “eyes were tortured by a faint light”(204) and how the mansion owner was a hypochondriac. This is narrative can also be seen through Hitchcock’s Psycho because of how its characters are act. This movie can be seen as a melodramatic staging because of the similarity between the characters Roderick Usher and Norman Bates because they both suffer from the same mindset, although their minds repress such urges quite differently. Roderick Usher attempts to repress his sexual urges towards his sister by hiding from her, fearing the future and by attempting to murder her and does not realize by repressing his sexual feelings he is hurting himself. Norman Bates is similar to Roderick Usher in the sense that he is repressing certain thoughts and his jealousy until he can no longer contain such. He hides the fact that he loves his mother more than he should and in a way that he should not, as he becomes more and more jealous of her and her lover, he poisons the both of them out of rage and jealousy. This may mean he head sexualized feelings and thoughts about his mother, in the same way Roderick Usher had towards his sister. Both characters over-dramatize their feelings and then express their shared anger in a dramatic and exaggerated way that they do not realize. This creates melodramatic ambiance and feelings within the setting of the stories and as well as for the audience.

Isabeli Pizzani

9/9/2018 11:50:24 pm

Question 2

At the end of Psycho, we learn that Norman Bates killed his mother and her lover after feeling jealous of her. After her death, Norman is filled with guilt, just like Roderick in “The Fall of the House of Usher” after burring Madeline. So, he suppresses the memory of his mother’s death and brings her back to life by creating another personality, based on hers. He represses his guilt and maintain his denial by embodying his mother.
Norman projects himself on his mother, similarly as Roderick does with Madeline, as Kathleen pointed out. Bates assumes his mother “is” as jealous of him, as he was of her, every time he is attracted to a woman, his personification of his mother kills. Therefore, as a side-effect of his repressed jealousy, his sexuality ends up being repressed.
While he is talking to Marion, Norman says: “Sometimes, when she talks to me like that, I feel I'd like to go up there, and curse her, and leave her forever.” He repulses his desire of freedom, because in order to leave his mother he needs to confront her unbearable death. So, there’s this conflict between his freedom and his unconscious guilt. Like Roderick Usher, who wishes to be free from his sister, he struggles with this fight between love and liberty. Both of them have an ambivalent love towards their family member that causes conflicts within themselves.

Ben Carson

10/9/2018 12:07:40 am

Q3-
The psychiatrist offers many answers to questions that would have most likely left viewers confused had they not been clarified. The psychiatrist explains how Norman’s mother essentially lives inside his head, and how she is mainly controlling him. The psychiatrist seemingly wraps up the saga of Norman Bates with his psychoanalytical conclusions, yet it isn’t the final scene in the film. It is also revealed there are 2 more missing persons cases in that area, offering up more questions that go unanswered. After the psychiatrists breakdown of the case, it cuts to an officer bringing a blanket to Norman, but we hear his mother’s voice respond. A monologue given by his mother shows us that she is completely in control of the body, it is only her inside of Norman’s head, and she say that she will convince the police that she didn’t kill anyone— that it was in fact her son. Even though the mother is speaking, it is clearly happening inside of Norman ’s mind. The final final scene of the film is a shot of the car being removed from the swamp, implying that there are still many secrets hidden away, for example the 2 other missing persons, waiting to be found, therefore leaving the viewers with many more unanswered questions. This ending is much like that of Usher, in the sense that the endings are both open. In the end of Psycho, they begin to uncover some of the secrets hidden away in the swamp. Contrarily to psycho, “The Fall of the House of Usher” ends with “everything crumbling down burying all the answers” as Doha so perfectly put it. Both stories end with a treasure trove of secrets waiting to be uncovered, unlike “A Rose for Emily”, where we knew the origins of Emily’s problems and unhapiness, and the story is wrapped up with everyone finding out all of the secrets Emily had been hiding.

Maria Fatima Agustin

10/9/2018 01:46:45 am

Question #3

Similarly to the “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “A Rose for Emily”, Psycho tells a mysterious story about characters who seem to be psychologically disturbed. To begin, they share the fact that the main mystery occurs in a house. For Usher, it’s in his haunted house-like mansion, for Emily, it’s in her smelly squarish frame house, and as for the movie Psycho, it was in Norman Bates’ creepy house. However, I noticed that unlike the two literature texts, Psycho does not show the character who suffers mentally immediately, rather in the middle of the movie. Personally, I thought that aspect of the film intrigued the viewers because we initially thought that Marion was the problematic person for she tried to run away without really clarifying her reasons to the viewers. However, that wasn’t the case because Hitchcock later introduced us to Norman who seemed like a normal person, yet peculiar.

The final outcome of the movie consisted of the psychoanalyst’s analysis of Norman’s condition. When he mentioned: “Now, to understand that the way I understood and hearing it from the mother− that is from the other half of Norman’s mind.”, it was clear that the state Norman was in was serious to the point where he can murder people without consciously knowing that doing so is extremely sinful. Just like what Doha and LéAnne mentioned, I was curious as to why Hitchcock didn’t end the movie with Norman’s creepy smile, but instead with Marion’s “car” being pulled out of the swamp. I wanted more explanation. Questions such as “What does the swamp really symbolize?”, “ At the end of the movie, why did Norman smile in such way that makes the watchers believe that there is more that he is hiding?”, “What will now happen to Norman?” came to me.

With that being mentioned, although Psycho shares numerous resemblances with the texts, I believe that the ending is more similar to “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In fact, at the end of the reading, it’s as if Madeline, Roderick and the mansion became one, just like how at the end of the movie, we witnessed Norman and his mother as one. Even if Psycho made me question the ending, it still gave me a solid explanation on Norman’s reasons for killing people, whereas Usher’s story made me ask myself questions like “How was the narrator able to escape right before the house collapsed on the bodies of the siblings?”, “What does the red moon at the end symbolize?”, “How did Madeline escape the chamber?”. The questions that I started asking myself at the ending of both stories are somehow similar in a way that we can’t fully answer them unless we analyze the plot in depth or ask the authors personally.

Kristopher Woofter

16/9/2018 04:15:26 pm

Dear PSYCHOs:

This response addresses some of the weaknesses from this set of responses. I conclude by highlighting the strongest responses as a way of giving inspiration to those of you whose responses required a bit more concrete and original observations, or stronger support and less speculation.

Briefly, the weaker responses were so largely because they didn’t push past the surface of things. None of the works we’ve studied thus far rest on easy solutions or conclusions—and certainly none of them take the term “evil” to mean anything specific, concrete, or even definable. Instead, they ask questions. It is these questions that I had hoped you would ask in your responses to my prompts.

Some key questions that needed to be asked were discussed in our class last week, among them the exchange of both victimhood and power that occurs between Norman and Marion in the dinner scene, and similar possible exchanges of power between Norman and Mother, and Marion and various other masculine threats to her (the police officer; the car salesman; the victim of her theft, Mr. Cassidy; her boss Mr. Lowery; and even her boyfriend Sam). Other key questions came up in our discussion of what happens when one puts the words of the psychiatrist against the words of Mother (and earlier, Norman himself) about what is happening to Norman. Honestly exploring these questions is something the film demands that we do.

The strongest responses did go further into such questions, and pushed past the superficial connections that could be made between the film and the literature. I would point you now to the posts by Emily Trankarov and Lyna Ikram Bayou. Please reread these posts, and the comments I made as in reply to them. For a post that not only asks the deeper questions, but also fixes on one, concrete image that suggests many possible paths of meaning in PSYCHO, see the post by Victoria Caputo, and my reply.

Above all, I want to say that one thing almost all of you were able to do was to make this string of posts feel like a real discussion. Many of you referenced the responses of your peers in a meaningful way. This is how it’s done, and this is also how you can encourage yourself to ask the deeper questions. Go further than the last person.

Marks for the Forum are based upon a model of Excellent (10/10), Good (8.5/10), and Satisfactory (7.5/10). If your response is not satisfactory, you will be asked to revise or rewrite it.

Cheers,
Kristopher

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