Themes and message

Transition from childhood to adolescence

The transition from childhood to adolescence theme is suggested throughout the story “Killing Lizards” by William Boyd. It is connected with the other theme in the sense that emotional neglect makes Gavin’s transition from childhood to adolescence even more difficult, making him adopt destructive behaviours.

The transition is implied through Gavin’s age, attitudes, and actions. At 12 years old, he still retains child-like attributes – for example, he still wants to play with his sister Amanda and his friends, and he is curious about the chemistry labs and his father’s experiments. He is also selfish and cruel in the way children sometimes are – he is upset he does not have his mother’s attention, has vindictive fantasises about his father and sister dying, and he easily convinces himself that lizards deserve to be killed.

The transition to adolescence is marked by Gavin starting to become sexually aware – he notices that his mother is a beautiful woman, and he is jealous of his father. This alludes to the Oedipus complex, a concept of psychoanalytic theory inspired by a myth in which a Greek king, Oedipus, accidentally kills his father and marries his mother. The concept theorises that children often develo...