Comparison Of Edmund White's Cinnamon Skin And Rara Avis '

Edmund White’s “Cinnamon Skin” and T.C. Boyle’s “Rara Avis” both contain tones of guilt and the perverse sense of pleasure. The tones provoke an impulse in the protagonists to repress the trigger of sexual desires. Freudian psychoanalytic critique of the texts outlines the external influences by characters represented as the id and superego to the protagonist’s representation as the ego. This dynamic interaction of the conflicting energies eventually pushes the boy in “Cinnamon Skin” to a compulsion of suicide and in “Rara Avis” to the narrator’s final act of throwing a stone at the bird. Through the use of Freudian psychoanalytic critique the paper outlines the external influences by characters represented as the id, ego, and superego.