there is more of an implied denial of the feelings the officer is harboring for his orderly because the officer's homoerotic attraction is never explicitly stated: "Gradually the officer had become aware of his servant's young, vigorous, unconscious presence about him....It was like a warm flame upon the older man's tense, rigid body....And this irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life by his servant" (Lawrence, "Prussian" 3). In each society, the emotions felt by the superior are so strongly taboo the characters are unaware of their feelings. Their lack of awareness comes from their need to repress these feelings so as to conform to the standards inherent in the place and time in which they live. The narrator of the Lawrence story tells us the officer feels the effect of his attraction although he makes an attempt to fight it off.
             His instinct warned him that he must not think. Deep inside him was the intense gratification of his passion, still working powerfully....He stood there for an hour, motionless, a chaos of sensations, but rigid with a will to keep blank his consciousness, to prevent his mind grasping....he had fought off the realization of what he had done. He had prevented his mind from taking it in, had suppressed it along with his instincts, and the conscious man had nothing to do with it. (Lawrence, "Prussian" 7-8).
             The narrator in the Hughes story expresses a similar struggle. "Colonel Norwood never would have admitted, even to himself, that he was standing in his doorway waiting for this half-Negro son to come home. But in truth that is what he was doing. He was curious about this boy" (Hughes, "Father" 600). The colonel's feelings go against the rules of the society in which he lives. There is so much pressure against the idea that a white man could accept his illegitimate black son, that the colonel cannot consciously realize that he has these feelings.
             In "Fat...