Literary Analysis: The Third Policeman When people meet for the first time, the first thing they do is exchange names. This type of conversation starter is a great way to get to know someone. Name sharing is an occurrence that happens on a daily basis. Names are a form of identity; it tells the other person how they should address their new acquaintance or someone they’ve known for a long time. Having a protagonist with no name was a strange, yet interesting twist that I experienced while reading The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. The narrator, as he is referred to in the novel, doesn’t remember his name. In O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, the author characterizes the narrator as someone who battles moral challenges caused by the consequences
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While his parents were alive, they were always around but never present. The narrator doesn’t remember a time where they ever paid attention to him or even called him his name. Which is another reason as to why he can’t remember how he was named. According to Erik Erikson’s Stages of Social-Emotional Development we can see where the narrator’s parents went wrong. Erikson has eight stages of development, which are: trust versus trust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus identity diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus self-absorption and integrity versus despair (Berger 58). Looking at each step in depth one can see what lacked and caused the narrator to become the person he is. In the article Don’t Shut Fathers Out by Eugenia Berger, the author states, “Young children need lots of verbal stimulation for developing the language centers of their brains, hence dad’s style of parenting help children develop self-regulation, while that of moms helps children acquire language skills …show more content…
He is so easily manipulated by Divney, which raises many questions about his character. Not only does Divney persuades the narrator to kill for him, he also starts taking ownership of the narrator’s belongings. The narrator says, “After a while it was useless trying to tell him that it was I who owned everything. I began to tell myself that even if I did own everything, he owned me (O’Brien, p. 11)”. This quote is heartbreaking to read. The narrator doesn’t feel like he is his own person. He feels owned, like he is someone else’s property. This of course could be argued that stems from being neglected as a
While his parents were alive, they were always around but never present. The narrator doesn’t remember a time where they ever paid attention to him or even called him his name. Which is another reason as to why he can’t remember how he was named. According to Erik Erikson’s Stages of Social-Emotional Development we can see where the narrator’s parents went wrong. Erikson has eight stages of development, which are: trust versus trust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus identity diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus self-absorption and integrity versus despair (Berger 58). Looking at each step in depth one can see what lacked and caused the narrator to become the person he is. In the article Don’t Shut Fathers Out by Eugenia Berger, the author states, “Young children need lots of verbal stimulation for developing the language centers of their brains, hence dad’s style of parenting help children develop self-regulation, while that of moms helps children acquire language skills …show more content…
He is so easily manipulated by Divney, which raises many questions about his character. Not only does Divney persuades the narrator to kill for him, he also starts taking ownership of the narrator’s belongings. The narrator says, “After a while it was useless trying to tell him that it was I who owned everything. I began to tell myself that even if I did own everything, he owned me (O’Brien, p. 11)”. This quote is heartbreaking to read. The narrator doesn’t feel like he is his own person. He feels owned, like he is someone else’s property. This of course could be argued that stems from being neglected as a