Sherwood Andersons Atory Im a Fool - Essay Example

The protagonist of “I’m a Fool” calls other people who are dressed well “common cattle” or “yaps”. Driven by an inferiority complex, the protagonist inflates his identity by treating himself to drinking whiskey and smoking an expensive cigar in a hotel for the rich. This complex makes him push a man who wears a Windsor tie and walks with a cane. It is also the driver of his condemnation of educated people (he is uneducated). Besides, what he says seems to be always aimed at looking important, which is also a clear sign of an inferiority complex. To illustrate,

Sometimes now I think that boys who are raised regular in houses, and never have a fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to high school and college, and never steal anything, or get drunk a little, or learn to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking up in front of a grandstand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty horsy pants on when the races are going on and the grand-stand is full of people all dressed up.” (Anderson 73).

These views of the story’s protagonist can be described as displays of rationalization. Specifically, rationalization in psychology is known to be a defense mechanism with the help of which an individual attempts to find an explanation despite the fact it may be illogical at all to take advantage of events that played against him. For example, the character starts rationalizing that he is superior to the man according to his philosophy: “Things are as you think about them”.  It means, in his view, people can be superior if they decide to be and other people can be inferior if only you think so.

The most interesting example of rationalization is when over the years the protagonist looks back at what happened and tries to find an explanation why he lied. Realizing that he is a fool (as he speaks of himself), he nevertheless blames his dishonesty and losing chances of winning the girl’s love on the whiskey he had drunk and on the man wearing a Windsor tie. This rationalization is, of course, illogical and does not reflect the real set of things, the drawbacks of the boy’s personality.

In conclusion, the two psychological concepts discussed about the behavior of the protagonist of “I’m a Fool” by Sherwood Anderson have been the inferiority complex and rationalization. The first one led the boy to failure, while the second one prevented him from overcoming the flaws of his behavior and the ambivalence of his personality.