Analysis of “The Demon Lover”
Reliving a past experience can often cause someone to have a relapse of those exact emotions of feelings. Elizabeth Bowen often uses her own life experiences throughout her work. Bowen often portrays herself as the main character. Bowen gives her readers a chance to read little bit and pieces of how her life was during the Blitz and World War II. In the short story “The Demon Lover” Elizabeth Bowen uses internal conflict to portray the effects of war.Mrs. Drover through her fear of her fiance’ shows how ones past can still haunt them. Elizabeth Bowen lived in a time where war was all around; in the streets and within her own home. Bowen, born on June 7th,1899 in Dublin. Dublin was her and her parents home until she turned seven. At the age of seven her
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The reason is because as Mrs. Drover is upstairs she begins to fear going downstairs, she fears that someone is in the house. That someone would be the author of the letter. Kathleen drover is paranoid, “masterful dramatization of acute psychological delusion, of a culmination of paranoia in a time of war.” (Hughes.411.) This shows she affects of war caused Kathleen Drover to live. Kathleen lived in fear of war. Living with paranoia.
In “The Demon Lover” Bowen gives the reader insight on the psychological state of Mrs. Drover. The way Kathleen lives with the relapse emotions and the fear that war is going to find her again,which it does. Elizabeth Bowen might have added the Psychological scene from her point of view as a small child. As a small child she would have watched her father’s mental state slowly deteriorate.
Mrs. Kathleen Drover went crazy and delusional because of the war. She could barely function normally when she went back to her home in the city. Bowen shows the psychological damages that a war can cause on someone. Bowen uses internal conflict to describe what went on during World War