Essay Questions

Apply the Queer theory in elucidating the night Charles and Lankton sleep together. - “The Child’s Champion”

Whitman observes, “As they retired to sleep… he folded his arms around him, and while he slept, the boy’s cheek rested on his bosom. Fair were those two creatures in their unconscious beauty-glorious, but yet how differently glorious! One of them was innocent and sinless of all wrong; the other – o that other, what evil had not been present, either in action or to his desires!” Lankton is erotically fascinated by Charles although they are strangers. Comparatively, Charles is sexually inexperienced. Manifestly, Lankton is unconsciously yearning for erotic closeness with Charles.

Provide a psychoanalytic assessment of Kate's clamor for revenge after Alfred Hamilton jilts her. - “How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson”

Twain writes, "She wanted revenge for the insult which had been put upon her...She wanted revenge.How could she get it? Well, on the whole the old way was good enough. She would resume, at the old stand. She would never marry, for she could not love again, but she would break every heart that came in her way, and try to imagine it was Hamilton's." Kate's plan to selfishly hurt men to avenge her heartbreak is tantamount to Displacement. She avenges on innocent parties to mollify her unconscious pining for revenge. Her zeal for revenge validates that Alfred Milton’s actions spawned unconscious sores which she anticipates to heal through measured vengeance.

What is Lankton’s prime unconscious need? - “The Child’s Champion”

Twain writes, “Living as he did, the young man was an unhappy being. It was not so much that his associates were below his own capacity, for Lankton, though sensible and well-bred, was by no means talented or refined-but that he lived without any steady purpose-that he too easily allowed himself to be tempted-which caused his life to be of late one continued scene of dissatisfaction.” Lankton’s disenchantment is attributed to a scarcity of Erotic needs. Although he is materially successful, he lacks erotic needs which could enable him to find happiness. Charles is representative of the love which Lankton yearns for.