Frederick- The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy

Burton's The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, the poem for which the book is named, may be the defining story in the book. The story contains many of Tim Burton's repeated themes, like abandonment, outsiderness, loss, and it also illustrates archetypes, like those described by Carl Jung.

In The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy , the story begins romantically, with a couple meeting and getting married, followed by their honeymoon. We see the mother archetype in the beginning, when the woman makes a wish for a baby while eating her seafood. Her intent starts at a good place. Right after we're introduced to the joys of a baby, however, the question is raised if this child is actually human. This is where the monster archetype is introduced and Oyster Boy is born. At the end of the fourth stanza, it says "This unnatural birth, this canker, this blight, was the start and the end and the sum of their plight". This line establishes Oyster Boy as a monster, and an unwanted child. The line also says something about the parents, and changed the mother archetype into more of a step-mother/witch archetype, which is obvious later in the poem when the mother encourages complains about their sex life to her husband and then has him eat the child to make him better.

The easiest way to relate Burton's experiences to the poem is in the theme of abandonment and outsiderness. Burton can be related to Oyster Boy in many ways. He was born to a happy normal family, just like Oyster Boy. Like Oyster Boy, he did not turn out life his parents, and they did not feel like they related to him. Oyster Boy's mother leaves him on a s
treet corner at one point, like Burton may have felt abandoned in his room with the boarded up windows. Kids did not get along with Oyster Boy and he was considered weird and different because of the way he looked. Burton was and is still considered eccentric, even weird, in the way he acts, thinks, and looks. The final abandonment of Oyster Boy, where he is killed, eaten, and buried and left, can be related to Burton's abandonment when he was sent to live with his grandmother. They both went to a "better place", but it was at the loss of any compassion from their parents.

Burton uses the archetypes to tell the story because it makes it less emotional and personal. All human's subconsciously understand the archetypes, at least according to Jung. By using a monster as opposed to a little boy, we almost start to blame Oyster Boy for his uniqueness, even though we know that it's not in his control. Since he himself is no where near that grotesque, Burton feels less strange, less weird. The archetype makes it easy to understand WHY parents would do something like that... even though it's still horrible.