King’s Psychological Gothicism
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unease and fear of self-dissolution; second, it triggers Mort’s unconscious
longing to liberate himself from the source of pain.
The Separation from the past, whether involuntarily enforced upon or
chosen by Mort Rainey, finds symbolic representation in yet another ambiguous
dream-thought: the weapon of the knife. Hence, his dream expresses both his
fear of Separation and annihilation and his wish to react violently against his exwife. It expresses Mort’s unconscious desire to kill her\ an act Mort almost
achieves at the end of the narration when he flings himself “at her, raising the
screwdriver over his head and then bringing it down” (King, Window 370).
The fact that both characters—hallucinated and real—emerge from two
different sides of the comfield, but then build a combined force against Mort,
indicates that his ex