Explore the movement from innocence to experience in L.P.Hartley's 'The Go-Between'.

The deadly nightshade in The Go-Between is used by Hartley as a symbol to exacerbate the sexual tension and bring focus to Leo’s own sexual awakening. Hartley evokes Leo’s sexual awakening through the phallic imagery of feeling the shoots of the deadly nightshade and its leaves closing softly on his hand after he stretches it into the thick darkness. This is made more effective by the connotations of sex associated with the sibilance of ‘swish’, ‘soft’ and ‘sighing’. Leo’s ultimate destruction of the deadly nightshade, representative of the forbidden relationship between Marian and Ted, reflects how he ‘killed’ Ted. Hartley characterises Ted as a dominant figure of male sexuality that Leo felt was ‘what a man ought to be’ and what he aspired to be when he ‘grew up’. This is ironic because by destroying Ted, Leo also destroys both his innocence and his sexuality thus forcing him to become ‘A foreigner in a world of emotions’. A Freudian reading suggests that this is because Leo represses his memory about his summer at Brandham Hall, and later his desires, because of its negative association with sexuality. Freudian critics would also suggest that Leo’s relations with Ted and Marian reflect those of a child with its parents, and so we view Ted’s death in the context of Freud’s Oedipus complex, according to which the child subconsciously desires his mother and wishes to kill his father. This suggests that it’s appropriate Leo should feel as if he ‘killed’ Ted, owing to Leo’s attachment to Ted as a paternal figure in the absence of his own father. Leo’s unacknowledged desire for Marian is conveyed through the ambivalent symbol of the plant, perhaps acting as a symbol of Marian herself. Leo’s apprehension to sex is evident in his reaction to the Belladonna, which through its name and form evokes temptation. Leo’s trust of Ted and Marian, particularly of the latter, stresses the ease in which they could exploit Leo and betray his innocence. Other interpretations may suggest that Ted is innocent from this betrayal, owing to the complexity of Marian and Leo’s relationship.