The way the narrator talks about his mother is on an entirely different level than the way he talks about anyone else. This caught my attention because he refers to his father as father, and his mother as Mama (145).  His mother is very important to him, mainly, because the he depends greatly on her to tuck him in at night.  “Why I went to sleep in the end even though Mama didn’t come to say goodnight to me,” (145). The narrator asks this question to himself, which shows that normally  he wouldn’t be able to sleep without her goodnight ritual. He mentions this need for his mother to come kiss him goodnight several times through out the reading. Another example, ” My sole consolation, when I went upstairs for the night, was that Mama would come kiss me once I was in bed …,” (150). It is quite normal for a child to love their mother the way the narrator does, but the way he writes about her seems like he is fantasizing about her. It is not clear whether or not he knew that his father found their goodnight ritual to be absurd, as a child, because he doesn’t care about what his father thinks. All he wants to do is satisfy his desires.

The narrator starts to seem obsessed with his mother towards the middle of the reading when he talks about preparing to kiss his mother by deciding where he is going to kiss before hand (160). This sounds like a predator preparing to attack their prey, but his plan failed because he was forced to go to his room without being able to follow through with his kiss. At this point he could not sleep, so he even tried to ask the cook to hand a letter to his mother for her to come, but that did not happen. He ended up having to lie about the contents in order for it to be delivered (162). This did not work either, but he does not give up, and now he is willing to upset his mother just to kiss her goodnight (163). He threw himself at his mother when he heard her coming up the stairs, and he told her to come say goodnight, but his father heard it and thought his life was over (166). Surprisingly, his father told his mother to sleep with him. At last  he got what he wanted, but now that he is no longer deprived of his mother, he is able to move on. Even though he was supposed to be happy that he got what he wanted, he wasn’t. He wants what he could not have, but when it was given to him he no longer wants it.

Would his desires changed if he was never deprived of it from the beginning?