A Freudian Analysis of Alberto Alvaro Rios's short story The Secret Lion
Thesis Statement: In his short story The Secret Lion, Alberto Alvaro Rios argues that in the process of growing up and maturing emotionally, physically and sexually, there are challenges to face and certain steps of development to overcome.
Organizing Statement: In order to support his argument, Alberto Alvaro Rios shows the narrator’s darker side, the fight against his id, his sexual maturation and the way the onset of puberty confronts the ego while mediating between the colliding demands of the id, superego and external reality.
Topic Sentence #1: While entering the genital phase, Alvaro Rios’s character is being confronted with new concepts of life, is learning new things and is trying to find a satisfying balance between his superego, his ego and the id.
Supporting Quote #1:
“I was twelve and in junior high school and something happened that we didn’t have a name for, but it was there nonetheless like a lion, and roaring, roaring that way the biggest things do.”
Supporting Quote #2:
“And we saw girls now, but they weren’t the same girls we used to know because we couldn’t talk to them anymore, not the same way we used to, certainly not to Sandy, even though she was my neighbor, too.”
Topic Sentence #2: In his younger years, the narrator’s use of an important amount of sexual imagery shows that he wanted to test it out, his curiosity to experiment with it since it was so new, and it is also a characteristic of his development level.
Supporting Quote #1:
“I found this particular hole and I put my Coke right into it, a perfect fit, and I called it my Coke-holder.”
Supporting Quote #2:
“As we were walking along yelling about one girl or another, a particular Claudia, we found [the grinding ball], one of these things, looked at it, picked it up, and got very excited, and held it and passed it back and forth, and we were saying “Guythisis, this is, geeGuythis is perfect, it’s...