Robert Bloch's Hitchcock Psycho

One of the smash hits of Hitchcock Psycho (1960) is based on a novel of the same name published in 1959 by the prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction, Robert Bloch. Psycho is the story of a charming boy Norman Bates (Antony Perkins) obsessively devoted to his mother. It is founded on the marital trauma of Mrs Bates’ and the frustrated romance of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin). Bloch’s novel begins with Norman but screen play writer Joseph Stephano wanted to open the film with the female character showing why she steals money and how she ends up at the Bates Motel and thus the first part of the film tells the story of Marion Crane who is in love with Sam Loomis but cannot
He spells “mom” in an unique way, protects her and keeps her safe from all dangerous interactions with the general public, admires her qualities and is quite satisfied with the version of himself defined alternatively through the maternal gaze and decree. He even felts angry when Marion wants to put her in an asylum. Both of them live in an isolated “California gingerbread” and to Pomerance these two are, for all intents and purposes, “married”. And “they certainly embody together a marriage of personalities, a marriage of intentions, and a marriage of memories” (239). To Marion Norman admits the fact that “ a boy’s best friend is his mother” that statement invokes an unresolved Oedipal configuration/arrangement. It also provides a clear evidence to the loyalty and allegiance he keeps with the woman upstairs. Mrs Bates’ legal husband is dead long ago and now she has only Norman who she keeps at her alterpiece. When we consider Bates’ marriage there are two aspects that are important. The first one is Mrs Bates’ overpossessiveness for Norman which acts as a challenge to any young woman that comes into his life. The girls who have preceded Marion might have met with similar endless wrath or
The girls might also have received the same eager and caring hospitality from the boy whose marriage has become suffocating and disempowering experience as a whole. The conventional and traditional relationship with his mother prevents Norman from having “extramarital” relationships with other women. (Pomerance 240-241). Norman’s hobby is taxidermy and he entertains people in a parlour full of stuffed birds. “Owl,” Hithcock told Truffaut, “belong to the night world; they are watchers, and this appeals to Perkins’ masochism. He knows the birds and he knows that they are watching him all the time. He can see his guilt reflecting in their knowing eyes” (Truffaut 282). Norman is a boy who is healthy, sexually active, curious, energetic, polite, modest and articulate. He is interested in girls but at the same time he protects his reclusive mother from the public eye. Mrs. Bates is the perfect mate for Norman-the love transcends