Portnoy's Complaint

“He used to brew dried senna leaves in a saucepan, and that, along with the suppository melting invisibly in his rectum, comprised his witchcraft.”

The way Alex describes his parents presents them as masters of competing witchcraft. They are both prominent figures in his life, offering him alternative ways to live. However, they are not consciously doing this. Alex’s description of their actions as witchcraft is an example of the way he fetishizes any behavior that he does not understand in an attempt to make sense of a complicated, adult world.

“How crazy can she possibly be?”

Alex’s memories of his mother vary wildly. Alex shares an early memory in which she seems to threaten him with a bread knife, suggesting that it played an important role in the development of his psyche. When he asks “how crazy can she possibly be” (11), however, he is also asking this about himself. He is searching for answers regarding his own state of mind, and he presents his parents’ erratic behavior as a yardstick against which he can judge himself.

“Disaster, you see, is never far from my mind.”

Alex is a natural pessimist. A recurring idea is that he chooses the most depressing or pessimistic interpretation of any given event. When he says that disaster is never far from his mind, the story’s structure proves his point. The non-linear structure allows Alex to present any happy memory alongside an unhappy memory, but he sandwiches brief moments of optimism with relentless pessimism.