Psychopathy In John Banville's Long Lankin

John Banville said, referring to his debut book 'Long Lankin ': "I put together a collection of connected short stories. Not that they had the same characters, but they were connected by theme and chronology". That is proved by factual aspects that are common in the eight stories. Nevertheless, if there is a story that differs from the others, that has to be Wild Wood. And the figure of Horse is very blameable for it.

The first aspect that is going to be discussed is the distinction between Wild Wood and the other stories presented in Long Lankin. Mainly, the difference remains in the effect of feelings in the plot. Banville uses less adjectives to describe the characters, and the protagonists do not feel nothing special about each other.

William Hirstein with Horse 's personality: First, psychopaths are uncaring about the other 's feelings and have shallow emotions. That does correlate with Horse, who does not respond to the boy 's worries in the story. Overconfidence and selfishness are two more aspects of psychopathy that Horse has throughout the work, as he is really sure he 's not going to get caught and he ends up leaving Rice and the boy alone just so he can save him from going to prison. As an addition, coldness is another thing attributed to psychopaths and Horse as well - the way he talks about the death of his beloved bunny when he was a child is really cruel. But the most important fact about psychopaths is violence. Horse 's recurrent action is to cut trees with his axe. John McMinn writes on his book The Supreme Fictions of John Banville about this, stating that there is an "implied relation" between this axe and the unsolved murder. Could it be that the axe represents the violence Horse has in his mind that makes him do what he did? It is a very plausible theory that answers why is Horse the murderer and justifies how he behaves throughout the whole short