The Motif Of Mother in Hitchcock’s “Psycho”

Mothers is the motif that I’m going to analyze. The shower scene really depicts how mentally gone Norman is. He’s dressed like his mom and to top it off he killed Marion. His split personality can be seen from his final words: “She wouldn’t even harm a fly.” This clearly portrays how Norman should have been put away a long time ago, which is what his mom should have done before. “A boy’s best friend is his mother” this shows how Norman doesn’t really have any friends and is mentally consumed and attached to this reality he lives in.

To make matters worse he dresses up in his mom’s clothes, acts like her, and even has an argument with himself. Norman is delusional and Alfred’s made that very clear at this point. The reason mothers were referenced in this film is because it brings a more humorous and light facet to the film. It also went further to intensify Norman’s split personality.

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By doing so, we can clearly see - Norman has truly lost his mind.

Hitchcock really shows his mother to be invasive and intimidating in many of his films. The famous shower scene really emphasizes how deranged he is. The sickest part of the film was the corpse stuffed in the fruit cellar along with the rest of the groceries. Some may not see it this way, but I believe that Norman has an Oedipus complex. His split personality on one side is norman, the other is his own mother.

Following the murder of his mom, he starts to act like her. Even dress like her. He killed his mom hand her boyfriend because he was so in love/attached to her that he couldn’t bare for anyone to ever take her away from him.

As you can see in the film, Norman typically acts normal. However, later in the film we see that his split personality would come out and he’d start acting like his mom. He gets angry when Marion proposed that she should move to a home. The reason he kills Marion is because he sees her as a threat to his mom. It’s pretty clear that Norman has an Oedipus complex. Once his dad was out of the picture he started to develop feelings for his mother. His fantasy continued to grow over time and he got closer to her as time went on. She may have abused him, but that didn’t change how he felt for her. What really got Norman upset was when this new guy comes in planning to swoop his beloved mother. Norman was not happy about that one bit. He started to get envious and seriously concerned that she’d leave him. Even though he ended up killing (mister steal your girl) and his mom, I’m not really all to sure if he intended to kill his mom. All we do know as the audience is that his fantasy to be with his mom forever stayed with him mentally and physically (kept her body in a fridge).