The name of Oedipus has been borrowed from the classical story of king Oedipus who unknowingly married his own mother and had children by her. The psychologists, Sigmund Freud and others use the term Oedipus complex for ‘a manifestation of infantile sensuality in the relations of the child to its parents. It is a state in which a person shows excessive affection for the parent opposite in sex to him or herself, and corresponding distance from others’. A great part of his life is actually controlled by this subconscious desires and passions, over which he has no control.

 The Kite by William Somerset Maugham is a study of particular psychological theories with reference to particular characters. The central theme of the story is Oedipal and it has been examined in all its ramifications. The story line is based on the primal relationship between Mrs. Beatrice Sunbury and her son Herbert. Here is replete with psychological truths, revealing attitudes, situations, and emotional states.

The over-possessive mother exercises an unhealthy influence on the emotional development of the growing boy. From the very early days Mrs. Sunbury wishes to nurture her son self-centric and possessive, her advice to her son is quite understandable. She says, “Now, Herbert, do what I do, keep yourself to yourself and don’t have anything to do with them than you can help”. Even she does not allow a single independent assertion on Herbert. Hence, when Herbert is twenty years of age, holding a steady job, Herbert’s father Samuel Sunbury asks if Herbert be get married Mrs. Sunbury’s reply is sharp and vicious. She answers: “I don’t hold with a man marrying till he knows his own mind’ ….. “And a man does not know his own mind till he is thirty or thirty-five”. Such a typical negative response is obviously of a jealous mother unwilling to share her son with a wife and who is trapping the soul of her son and ruins his personal.

Herbert loves her mother almost like a mother-lover. The mother is the very axis and pole of his life. The bond between this mother and her son deepens when they fly the kites as fancy and hobby almost like a ritualistic manner every Saturday. Flying kites is like an imaginary escapism from the monotony of life. The soul of Herbert is so possessed by the mother figure that this kite flying is like nearing to the mother denying the rest of

attraction. If emotions are treated as manifestation of physico-psychic phenomena, Herbert’s fatal attraction for the kite is cul de sac of mother fixation.

 Herbert’s love for Betty and his choice of getting married to her is a desperate attempt to free himself from the excessive attachment to his mother. But he cannot give to Betty what he has already given to his mother; and thus results the terrible and torturing conflict within him. Like Mrs. Morel in Lawrence’ Sons and Lovers Mrs. Sunbury is Jealous of her daughter-in-law. Mrs. Sunbury dislikes Betty who will suck all her Son’s Soul and leave nothing for her. Therefore, she does her best to break up their relationship. In the dark shadow of the mother image that comes between Paul’s relations with Miriam in Sons and Lovers, can have its parallel to Herbert – Betty relationship. Alike Paul, Herbert is incapable of satisfactory sexual adjustment owing to his mother fixation. The Oedipus complex in him has weakened and stunted emotionally.

In the kite the whole story is given a symbolic significance through flying a kite. It is an act of affectionate attachment. Even it is not a plaything, rather an extension of Beatrice’s control over her son. After the marriage what Betty objects and rebels against is Herbert’s flying of the kite on Saturdays with his parents. She dislikes this childish act and warns Herbert from doing this silly favour. But Herbert’s fatal attraction for the kite is a string of mother fixation. Mrs. Sunbury pulls the thread of the kite (emotional attachment) to control over her son. When all the possible pleadings result in vain, Betty hacks down the kite which ultimately aggravates the situation. Herbert chooses the prison instead of providing the alimony to his wife. The smashing of the kite is a kind of matricide for him which he can not forbear.

The entire complication of the story can thus be read through the Freudian complexes. Maugham is an explorer of human relationships and in this story he has studied sex relationship from different angles. Mrs. Sunbury and Betty are both wrong in being too possessive. Both of them want to possess the soul or the personae of Herbert. But satisfactory relationship result only when we recognize the otherness of the other individuals. Successful adjustment would have resulted had these two women recognized that Herbert has a separate identity with separate personae of his own, which can reach fulfillment in its own way. The mother fails to recognize this truth and so ruins the life of Herbert.    - See more at: http://ardhendude.blogspot.com/2011/01/kite-by-william-somerset-mangham-is.html#sthash.CfNW9NXa.dpuf

Keats is famous for the magic of verbal perfection and the rounded felicity of expression for the which Arnold gives him a place as high a that of

Shakespeare .His motto of an artistic style was to “lead every rift of a subject with ore” He himself said that he looked upon a time phrase as lover looks upon his beloved. His poems are full of such phrases as haunt the imagination by leas on of their aptness and musical quality. In most of Keats’s phases there is a quality which makes unlike Shakespeare’s something fanciful or rather suggestive phrases which display their poesy rather than their meaning. Closely allied to these imaginative phrases are the short vivid pictures he gives us, which are the master-pieces in word-painting and which show clearly his influence on the pre-Raphaelite School of poets. His is the originality as a pictorial artist in his descriptions which appeal mainly to senses. “There is something furnished and firm about these pictures as if they were welded on a metal plate”.

The ‘Ode to Nightingale’ amply shows the magic al felicity of Keats’s style such expressions are “full-throated ease” , “light-winged Dryad of  trees” , “purple-stained mouth”, “leaden-eyed despairs” ,”the murmur haunt of flies” etc show the high water-mark of verbal perfection and of the concretization of imagery . They haunt the imagination by their openness and musical quality. The phrases like “melodious plot”, “verdurous gloom” , “embalmed darkness” , “sun-burnt mirth” , “blushful Hippocrene’ impress the reader more for their poetry than for then meaning . The deep suggestiveness of passage:-                                        “Charmed magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in fairy loved forlorn” Is unparallel in the whole range of English poetry. As we read it we catch a Nest vista of medieval times with the shadowy enchanters’ castle in a kingdom by the sea, the lonely tower of which encloses on imprisoned princess. The passage is indeed a wonderful example of perfect word painting. About this passage Rossetti says, “It shows a reach of expression which might almost be called the pillions of Hercules of human language. Far greater things have been said greater misob, but no thing perfect in form has been said – no thing wider in scale comes closer in utterance-by any mind of what so ever pitch of granter” .The deception of a beaker of wire with beaded bubbles winking at the brim “is are the instance of Marvell our verbal pictures that fill the poem.

The line “where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs” is a master piece in Word-painting. As we sea  it a vivid picture of bald leaded old man hobbling along trembling and tittering starts up before our vision .

Like the ‘Nightingale ode” , ‘ode to Autumn’ shines the magical felicity of Keats’s style. The expression like “mellow fruitfulness,” “clam any cells” “hair soft lifted” “half seeped furrow”, garden  - gift” , “hilly born”, etc haunt our him agnation  by reason of their Aptness  and picturesque. Such phrases as “maturing sum” “barred clouds”, “winnowing wind”, etc. appeal to us for their poetry rather than for their meaning.The expression “And full-grown lamb lend beat from hilly brown” is a marvell on pastoral beauty. There is Instance of word painting as we sea in the line the picture of the full-grown Lambs lonely beating in their dwelling on the hills flasher across our vision. The line, “And gathering swallows twitter in the skills” is aloe remarkable for the word picture it gives.

The “ode on a Grecian urn” shows the magic al felicity of Keats’s style. It is full of well-chosen phrases, expressions and concrete images-“leaf fringed legend”, “Fair youth beneath the hers” etc. These expressions omelet images effectively stir our imagination like some pictures of the win boarder with ornamental leaf work round the different scenes, the melodist playing on his pipe and the heifer blowing a loud with its neck stretched and turned up towards the sky, flash across our mental eyes. It is in this verbal picture that the poet’s sensuous pleasure becomes spiritualized into joy irradiated with beauty.  - See more at: http://ardhendude.blogspot.com/2012/09/john-keats-style-and-image-magic-of.html#sthash.g6QTQdDB.dpuf