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from Brown Corpus
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I had read the story many times without asking myself why it affected me or caring why it did.
But on one occasion when I encountered a similar fantasy in a little boy who was my patient I began to understand the uncanny effects of this story.
It was, of course, a little boy's fantasy of winning his mother to himself, and replacing the father who could not give her the things she wanted -- a classical oedipal fantasy if you like -- but if it were only this the story would be banal.
Why does the story affect us??
How does the rocking exert its uncanny effect upon the reader??
The rocking is actually felt in the story, a terrible and ominous rhythm that prophesies the tragedy.
The rocking, I realized, is the single element in the story that carries the erotic message, the unspoken and unconscious undercurrent that would mar the innocence of a child's fantasy and disturb the effects of the work if it were made explicit.
The rocking has the ambiguous function of keeping the erotic undercurrent silent and making it present ; ;
it conceals and yet is suggestive ; ;
a perfect symbol.
And if we understand the rocking as an erotic symbol we can also see how well it serves as the symbol of impending tragedy.
For this love of the boy for his mother is a hopeless and forbidden love, doomed by its nature.

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