You will write a paper of interpretive literary criticism on the short story “The B.A.R. Man” by Richard Yates.
Essays of literary criticism should aim to enrich the reading of others by identifying and explaining aspects of the reading that you find significant. This does not necessarily mean you will reduce the story to a simple meaning or message. Instead, you will show how the story creates meaning through its crafting of character, setting, plot, point of view, language, and style.
This essay of literary criticism also requires that you make use of the Tyson chapter on psychoanalytic theory, and this will help you decide which significant aspects of the story to focus on. You need to show how one (or more) psychoanalytic concepts work in the story: repression, the return of the repressed, projection, denial, the libido, oedipal complexes, envy, selective memory, primary and secondary revision, etc.
