Walking back into the shadowy dark parlor and shutting the door behind him, motel manager

Norman listens
at the wall for sounds in the adjoining Cabin Room 1. Then, he removes one of the nude paintings from a
hook [a replica of Susanna and the Elders - in which a nude is assaulted by two male satyrs], revealing a
jagged hole chipped out of the wall with a bright peephole in its center [a symbol of feminine sexuality].
When he leans down to peer at Marion through the hole, his eye, in profile view, is illuminated by the light
from her bedroom. The camera angle shifts and from Norman's point of view, he sees her undress down to
her black brassiere and slip in front of her open bathroom door [a subjective camera placement implicates
the audience in his peeping voyeurism].
A gigantic closeup of his large unblinking, profiled eye fills the screen - at precisely the same instant that he
is lustfully watching Marion remove her undergarments and become naked. The camera cuts back to Marion
as she covers her nude self with a robe and walks out of his/our view. An aroused Norman nervously
replaces the picture, glances up to the house (in profile) with his jaw slightly twitching, and then resolvedly
walks out. At the door to the office, he again glares up toward the house (in profile) and then begins
bounding up the steps to his hillside home. Inside the house, he pauses at the carved staircase, places his
hand on the banister post - and then with his hands in his pockets, retreats to the kitchen and sits hunched
over the table at an odd angle. He twirls the cover on the sugar bowl. [The schizophrenic camera - or his
Mother - voyeuristically watches him - and he appears to sense and realize it.]
In her motel room, Marion begins to reconsider her larcenous crime - she considers repenting and
redeeming herself by returning the money. She sits at the room's desk with her First Security Bank of
Phoenix bank book (with a balance of $824.12) and a scratch book of paper. She figures out how much she
will have left after repaying the $700 she spent on her used getaway car (a paltry $124.12). Then she tears
out the piece of paper from the scratch book and rips it up into small pieces. [At this point, it is left unclear
whether she has decided to repent (and become clean and innocent again), or whether she changes her
mind.]
To hide all evidence, she decides not to use the wastebasket and flushes the shreds down the toilet in the
gleaming white bathroom - the noisy flush is emphasized as she watches the pieces circle around the bowl.
[This was a convention-breaking taboo - to show a toilet and flush in a mainstream American film. This drain
and 'flushing' imagery foreshadows the one of her own blood circling down the shower drain following her
death.] She closes the lid on the toilet bowl, shuts the bathroom door, removes the robe from her naked
back, drapes the robe over the toilet, steps naked into the bathtub (the camera displays her bare legs), pulls
across the translucent shower curtain and prepares to take a shower before retiring - a final soul-cleansing
act.
[In the next scene, the classic, brutal shower murder scene, an unexplainable, unpremeditated,
and irrational murder, the major star of the film - Marion - is shockingly stabbed to death after
the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It is the most famous murder scene ever filmed and one of
the most jarring. It took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film, 70
camera setups, and a naked stand-in model (Marli Renfro) in a 45-second impressionistic
montage sequence, and inter-cutting slow-motion and regular speed footage. The audience's
imagination fills in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings. Actually, she
never really appears nude (although the audience is teased) and there is only implied violence -
at no time does the knife ever penetrate deeply into her body. In only one split instant, the knife
tip touches her waist just below her belly button. Chocolate syrup was used as 'movie blood',
and a casaba melon was chosen for the sound of the flesh-slashing knife.]

The infamous scene begins peacefully enough. She opens up a bar of soap, and turns on the overhead
shower water - from a prominent shower head nozzle (diagonally placed in the upper left) that sends arched
needles of spray over her like rain water. There in the vulnerable privacy of her bathroom, she begins to
bathe, visibly enjoying the luxurious and therapeutic feel of the cleansing warm water on her skin. Marion is
relieved as the water washes away her guilt and brings energizing, reborn life back into her. Large closeups
of the shower head, that resembles a large eye, are shot from her point-of-view - they reveal that the water
bursts from its head and pours down on her - and the audience. She soaps her neck and arms while smiling
in her own private world (or "private island") - oblivious for the moment to the problems surrounding her life.
With her back to the shower curtain, the bathroom door opens and a shadowy, grey tall figure enters the
bathroom. Just as the shower curtain completely fills the screen - with the camera positioned just inside the
tub, the silhouetted, opaque-outlined figure whips aside (or tears open) the curtain barrier. The outline of the
figure's dark face, the whites of its eyes, and tight hair bun are all that is visible - 'she' wields a menacing,
phallic-like butcher knife high in the air - at first, it appears to be stab, stab, stabbing us - the victimized
viewer! The piercing, shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music play a
large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene - they start 'screaming' before Marion's own
shrieks. [The sound track resembles the discordant sounds of a carnivorous bird-like creature 'scratching
and clawing' at its prey.] Marion turns, screams (her wide-open, contorted mouth in gigantic close-up), and
vainly resists as she shields her breasts, while the large knife repeatedly rises and falls in a machine-like
fashion.
The murderer appears to stab and penetrate into her naked stomach, shattering her sense of security and
salvation. The savage killing is kinetically viewed from many angles and views. She is standing in water
mixed with ejaculatory spurts of blood dripping down her legs from various gashes - symbolic of a deadly and
violent rape. She turns and falls against the bathtub tiles, her hand 'clawing and grasping' the back shower
wall for the last shred of her own life as the murderer (resembling a grey-haired woman wearing an old-
fashioned dress) quickly turns and leaves. With an unbloodied face and neck/shoulder area, she leans into
the wall and slides, slides, and slides down the wet wall while looking outward with a fixed stare - the camera
follows her slow descent.
In a closeup, Marion outstretches her hand (toward the viewer), clutches onto the shower curtain and pulls it
down from its hooks (one by one) upon herself as she collapses over the edge of the bathtub - her face
pitches forward and is awkwardly pressed to the white bathroom floor in front of the toilet. She lies bleeding
on the cold, naked floor, with the shower nozzle still spraying her body with water [the soundtrack resembles
soft rainfall].
The camera slowly tracks the blood and water that flows and swirls together counter-clockwise down into the
deep blackness of the bathtub drain - Marion's life has literally gone down the drain. The drain dissolves into
a memorable closeup - a perfect match-cut camera technique - of Marion's dead-still, iris-contracted [a dead
person's iris is not contracted but dilated], fish-like right eye with one tear drop (or drop of water). The
camera pulls back up from the lifeless, staring eye (freeze-framed and frozen at the start of the pull back),
spiraling in an opposite clockwise direction - signifying release from the drain. [The association of the eye
within the bottomless darkness of the drain is deliberate, as is the contrast between Norman's 'peeping tom'
eye and Marion's dead eye. Her eye is slightly angled upward toward where Norman was positioned.]
On the soundtrack gushing shower water is still heard. The camera pans from Marion's face past the toilet
and into the bedroom for a zoom close-up of Marion's folded-up newspaper on the nightstand. The bedstand
also supports an empty ashtray and erect lampstand with a circular base. The camera continues to pan over
along the flowery wall-papered wall to the open window where the house is visible. From there, Norman's
voice is heard crying:
Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!

[From a common-sense point-of-view, how could Norman have known?]

Norman scrambles down the hill to the scene of the crime in Cabin one, accompanied by the shrill music
once again. At the bathroom door after viewing the curtain-less shower and the dead body, he turns away
and cups his hand to his mouth, revulsed and nauseated by the horrific scene and possibly stifling a scream
- and 'knocking off a bird' picture from the wall [Norman has literally knocked off a 'bird'].
He regains his composure, closes the open window, sits shaking in a chair, and then closes the cabin's door
- camera angles often include the newspaper. He turns out the light, leaves the room, pauses outside, enters
his motel office, and then shuts off the lights after closing the door behind him. [Hitchcock lingers on a view
of the closed and darkened motel office door from the outside - note that the shadow of the roof overhang on
the door's window forms the deathly silhouette of a guillotine blade-wedge!]
Dutifully, he re-appears from the office, carrying a mop and pail to methodically clean-up following the
murder. [The audience is left with sympathetically identifying with the devoted, dutiful, automaton son who is
once again cleaning up the mess and covering up for his misguided, insane mother's behavior. Clearly, the
murder is not motivated by a lust for money.] He enters the bathroom, turns off the shower water, and then
spreads out the shower curtain on the floor of the bedroom. He drags Marion's limp/nude corpse to the
curtain and afterwards shows off his 'dirty' hands to the camera on this "dirty night." [Subjectively, his hands
are really the audience's hands.] He washes his hands in the sink - blood and water again swirl down the
drain. He rinses the sink clean of blood and then obsessively swabs and wipes up every trace of the bloody
murder in the bathroom with the mop, after which he dries everything with a towel. He drops his towel and
mop into the empty bucket at the conclusion of the laborious, ritualistic process.
Norman tiptoe-edges around her body as he goes outside to back Marion's car (and trunk) closer to the
room's door. Then, he wraps her up in the plastic curtain [rolling and bundling her up like the money in the
newspaper in the make-shift shroud], carries her over the door's threshold (!) and onto the porch, and places
the corpse in the trunk of her car. He straightens up the bird picture that had fallen to the floor, packs up her
few belongings, and also tosses them in the car. The final lingering trace of Marion and another crime - her
folded newspaper concealing the money - is the last thing found in the room. Without looking inside, he non-
chalantly tosses it into the car trunk and slams it shut. He drives off - a camera closeup of the car's rear end
reveals its license plate - NFB 418 [signifying 'Norman F Bates' - the F represents Francis, a reference to St.
Francis, patron saint of birds] and drives to a nearby, bordering swamp-hole filled with quicksand.
He gets out and pushes the light-toned car into the dark thick morass of waters to submerge the evidence,
watching nervously and nibbling as it slowly gurgles lower and lower into the muck. He cups his hands in
front of his chin, fearful that it won't sink entirely. The car sinks only part way in - and then halts. Norman,
looking remarkably like a scared bird, darts his head around anxiously. Then he grins approvingly when it is
finally swallowed up - again down a drain of sorts - by the blackness. He is relieved that the evidence is
covered up. [Audience identification shares Norman's relief.] The scene fades to black.

Rain drops begin to splash on the windshield, as oncoming headlights blind Marion's tired eyes (she has
been traveling for almost 30 hours with nothing to eat and an uncomfortable Friday night's sleep in her car).
The rainstorm becomes more violent, and the windshield wipers slash back and forth through the water
across her window, accentuated by the soundtrack. [A perfect visual metaphor for the celebrated shower
scene to come!] Although the rain has a cleansing, climactic effect and her inner monologues cease (and the
music dies down), her vision is blurred and obscured - literally - and she becomes lost and driven off the
main road. Glaring car headlights (from behind or ahead) disappear. The side road she has been derailed
onto is dark - suddenly up ahead, a neon "BATES MOTEL VACANCY" sign appears (seen from her point of
view) - almost conjured up like all her other interior imaginations. Her flight is aborted. She pulls in to the out-
of-the-way, deserted, and downbeat roadside motel - a modest but seedy looking place.
As the rain is beating down, she parks in front of the motel office and gets out of her car. The office is lighted
but unattended. Then, from the motel porch, she peers around the corner of the motel, looking up at the
gloomy, gothic-style Victorian house behind the motel on a hill. The stereotypical horror movie's 'old dark
house' looks like a giant skull with lighted windows/eyes. In a lighted second story window, she sees the
silhouetted figure of an old woman pass in front of the window. She honks her horn a few times to signal her
presence.
The nervous, gangly thin, shy, peculiar but likeable caretaker, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) breathlessly
bounds down the steps on the hill in the rain (carrying an unopened umbrella) - smiling and greeting her with
the words:
Gee, I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain. Go ahead in, please.

As she enters the empty office, the camera captures her reflected image in a mirror, and then a split-second
image of both of their faces in the mirror. They speak to each other in profile across the desk, prefaced by his
meaningful, ironic comment: "Dirty night." According to the twitchy proprietor, the motel is completely vacant:
"We have twelve vacancies. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies. They moved away the highway." He is
delighted to see a visitor because nobody ever stops at the motel unless they accidentally get off the "main
road" [another ironic comment about her waywardness]: "Nobody ever stops here anymore unless they've
done that." Her handbag is placed next to her on the desk, with the word "OKAY" visible at the top of her
folded Los Angeles Tribune newspaper. With frayed nerves from her experience, Marion awkwardly registers
in the guest book under a false identity as Marie Sam-uels [a reference to her unfulfilled wish to marry Sam]
from Los Angeles after a glance at her paper. The motel keeper banters on with a significant statement:
There's no sense dwelling on our losses. We just keep on lighting the lights and following the
formalities.

At the same moment that she lies about her address, the attendant hesitates when he reaches for the room
key to Cabin 3. Turning slightly sideways, he selects instead the key to Cabin 1 - the room that adjoins the
office: "it's closer in case you want anything." She learns she is only about 15 miles from Fairvale, Sam's
town. He takes her bags from the back seat and leads her to her room. As he shows her the interior of the
room, he comments on its smell - another richly-textured line: "Boy, it's stuffy in here," and opens the window.
In a charming, friendly, eager-to-please way, the uptight proprietor meticulously shows Marion where
everything is, pausing on the word "mattress" [a word remarkably similar to the word matricide], possibly
because he is nervous about being in the bedroom alone with a pretty woman:
Well the, uh, mattress is soft, and there's hangers in the closet and stationery with 'Bates Motel'
printed on it, in case you want to make your friends back home feel envious.
Framed bird pictures adorn the drab walls. But he stammers as he turns on the bright bathroom lights and
points her to the "and the, uh, over there" (she must provide the word bathroom for him as if it was a
forbidden, dirty word), the white-tiled bathroom. He offers his services: "Well, if you want anything, just tap on
the wall. I'll be in the office."
When she learns his name - it's not "Mr. Bates" he suggests, but a more personable "Norman Bates" - her
image is reflected in the room's mirror, clutching her purse with the stolen bundle of money. He shyly and
humbly invites her to dinner in his house: "Would you have dinner with me? I was just about to myself. You
know, nothing special, just sandwiches and milk...I don't set a fancy table, but the kitchen's awful homey."
[His own self-deprecating opinion of himself is that he is "nothing special."] She agrees and he tells her to
wait in her room and he'll be back "as soon as it's ready" with his "trusty umbrella."
While he is gone, Marion places both her handbag and suitcase on the bed. She takes the money from her
handbag and looks for a better place to conceal the money - she opens up three drawers. She finally decides
to wrap it up in her Los Angeles newspaper and place it in plain view on the bed nightstand (the word 'OKAY'
is ironically still visible in the headline). [As she sets the paper down, it's as if a voice she hears saying "NO!"
from the house judges her guilty action.]
Through the window (that Norman conveniently opened) facing the old house, Marion hears voices - an
argument that Norman is having with his shrill-voiced, domineering mother (voice of "Mother" by Virginia
Gregg) over his "cheap erotic" dinner invitation to the young woman [the film's voyeur theme is reinforced by
the idea of Norman's mother 'peeking' into her son's life with her ears]:
Mother: No! I tell you No! I won't have you bringing strange young girls in for supper by
candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds.
Norman: Mother, please!
Mother: And then what - after-supper music, whispers?
Norman: Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry and it's raining out. (Marion turns away
from the window)
Mother: (mocking him) 'Mother, she's just a stranger.' As if men don't desire strangers. (Marion
turns back and eavesdrops some more) Oh, I refuse to speak of disgusting things because they
disgust me. Do you understand boy? Go on, go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite
with my food or my son. Or do I have to tell her, because you don't have the guts? Huh, boy?
Do you have the guts boy?
Norman: Shut up! Shut up!

Uncomfortable, she turns away from the window until she hears the door shut. She watches Norman, who
has defied his mother, carrying a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of milk down the hill. Marion waits outside
her motel door, and moments later sees Norman turn the corner onto the porch: "I caused you some trouble,"
she apologetically states. As they stand together on the porch, the camera photographs them as if they were
the two sides of the same coin, and Norman's image is reflected in the glass window behind him - and
symbolic of his split personality. Crestfallen, Norman tells Marion that his mother is extremely disagreeable.
She resigns herself to 'eat'-ing his "fixed" supper:
Norman: No. Mother, my mother, uh, what is the phrase? - she isn't qu-quite herself today.
Marion: You shouldn't have bothered. I really don't have that much of an appetite.
Norman: Oh, I'm sorry. I wish you could apologize for other people.
Marion: Don't worry about it. But as long as you've fixed the supper, we may as well eat it.

As she leans back with her hands folded across her front and invites him into her motel room to eat, Norman
steps forward and backward one step, stiffens uncomfortably and lowers his gaze, and then proposes that it
would be "nicer and warmer" in the motel office. She is amused by his bashfulness and pathetic self-
consciousness - and sympathetic to his nervous awkwardness around her. And because it is "too officious" in
the office, he suggests the darkened parlor (with only one Tiffany lamp) behind the office: "I-I-I-I have the
parlor back here."
[The ominous invitation into the parlor recalls the words of Mary Howitt's 19th century poetic
fable, The Spider and the Fly - an excerpt follows below:

"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you may spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly; "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."...
 And then, in the conclusion:

...He dragged her up his winding stair, into the dismal den -
Within his little parlor - but she ne'er came out again!
And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words I pray you ne’er give heed;
Unto an evil counsellor close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the spider and the fly.

The parallel to the fable is even more prophetic when one recalls the final ironic words of
Norman (or his alter ego): "I'm not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They'll
see. They'll see and they'll know and they'll say, 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly.'"]

The parlor is decorated with his stuffed [stuffy, but in another sense] trophy birds mounted on the walls or on
stands - an enormous predatory, nocturnal owl with outstretched wings, a raven [a bird with a knife-like beak
that preys on carrion (Marion?)], a pheasant, and a hawk - and classic paintings of nude women being raped.
As he sits straight up and leans forward as in a toilet-like position while she nibbles on a sandwich (but
doesn't drink any of the milk from the large pitcher), he looks on, fondles a stuffed bird, and talks about his
"uncommon" and "cheap" hobby "to pass the time" - his interest in avian taxidermy:
Norman: It's all for you. I'm not hungry. Go ahead. (He intently watches her first bite.) You, you
eat like a bird.
Marion (looking around): You'd know of course.
Norman (stuttering): No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression, 'eats like a bird' it, it's really a
fals-fals-false-falsity because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I don't really know anything
about birds. ['Birds' also connotes 'women'.] My hobby is stuffing things. You know, taxidermy.
And I guess I'd just rather stuff birds because I hate the look of beasts when they're stuffed. You
know, foxes and chimps. Some people even stuff dogs and cats but, boy, I can't do that. I think
only birds look well stuffed because, well because they're kinda passive to begin with. (She
tears the piece of bread in her hands, ending up with typical 'bird' food - bread crumbs!)
Marion: Strange hobby. Curious.
Norman: Uncommon, too.
Marion: Oh, I imagine so.
Norman: And itsa, it's not as expensive as you'd think. It's cheap really, you know, needles, and
thread, sawdust. The chemicals are the only thing that, that cost anything.
Marion: A man should have a hobby.
Norman: Well, it's, it's more than a hobby. (He fondles a stuffed bird on the bureau next to him.)
A hobby's supposed to pass the time, not fill it.
Marion: Is your time so empty?
Norman: No, uh.

He dutifully confides that he doesn't have other friends - his "best friend is his mother." Their conversation
leads to speaking about how human beings become imprisoned "in our private traps" - in a narrow and
minimal existence - in the course of their private lives. Marion sees parallels in her own life - she is caught in
a degraded and draining relationship with a weak-willed Sam, similar to how Norman is debilitated by his
enforced caring for his mother:
Norman: Well, I run the office and uh, tend the cabins and grounds and, and do a little, uh,
errands for my mother. The ones she allows I might be capable of doing. (He smiles to himself.)
Marion: Do you go out with friends? (He brings his hands back to his lap.)
Norman: Well, a boy's best friend is his mother. You've never had an empty moment in your
entire life, have you?
Marion: Only my share.
Norman: Where are you going? (She appears stony-eyed.) I didn't mean to pry.
Marion: I'm looking for a private island. (He leans forward.)
Norman: What are you running away from?
Marion (frowning): Wh-why do you ask that?
Norman: People never run away from anything. (changing the subject) The rain didn't last long,
did it? You know what I think. I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and
none of us can ever get out. We scratch and, and claw, but only at the air, only at each other.
And for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.
Norman: I was born in mine. I don't mind it any more.
 Marion: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
Norman: Oh, I do. (Laughs and shrugs) But I say I don't.

Assertively, Marion insists that he can free himself from the traps that he feels have possessed him since
birth - in actuality, she is in the process of healing herself and ready to renounce her own madness. She can't
believe that he is traumatized so harshly by his mother - and suggests he should break away from her.
According to Norman, he was raised by his widowed mother after the age of five. He was the central focus of
his mother's attention until she fell in love with a man who talked her into building the Bates Motel. When his
mother's lover died under unusual circumstances and she was bankrupted, "it was just too great a shock for
her" and she went insane:
Marion: You know, if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard the way she spoke to you...
Norman: (positioned in front of his stuffed owl) Sometimes, when she talks to me like that, I feel
I'd like to go up there and curse her and, and leave her forever. Or at least defy her. (He sits
back passively like a little boy.) But I know I can't. She's ill.
Marion: She sounded strong.
Norman: No, I mean ill. She had to raise me all by herself after my father died. I was only five
and it must have been quite a strain for her. She didn't have to go to work or anything like that.
He left her a little money. Anyway, a few years ago, Mother met this man, and he talked her into
building this motel. He could have talked her into anything. And when he died too, it was just too
great a shock for her. And, and the way he died. (he smiles broadly at the thought) I guess it's
nothing to talk about while you're eating. Anyway, it was just too great a loss for her. She had
nothing left.
Marion: Except you.
Norman: A son is a poor substitute for a lover. [The film's suggestion of incest!]
Marion: Why don't you go away?
Norman: To a private island, like you?
Marion: No, not like me. (Marion's pose is similar to the one of the nude woman in the painting
in the far left background behind Norman.)

Norman was forced into the role of nurse-maiding his deranged and invalid [mentally - "ill" ?] mother after his
step-father's death. He erupts with furious intensity when she suggests that his mother be committed
"someplace..." Marion is slowly made aware of how Norman's imprisoning predicament and treatment by his
mother is far worse than her own situation. After Norman has sympathetically told her the story of his mother
and their hard lives, Marion is compassionate but incredulous regarding his passive acceptance of his duty,
his unhealthy, troubled devotion to his mother, and his sexual repression:
Norman: I couldn't do that. Who'd look after her? She'd be alone up there. The fire would go out.
It'd be cold and damp like a grave. If you love someone, you don't do that to them - even if you
hate them. You understand that I don't hate her. I hate what she's become. I hate the illness.
Marion: Wouldn't it be better if you put her - (she pauses and avoids speaking the obvious word)
someplace ...
Norman (leaning forward with a mad look on his face, both angry and defensive): You mean
an institution? A madhouse? People always call a madhouse 'someplace,' don't they? Put her in
'some place.'
Marion: I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound uncaring.
Norman: (He grins) What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of
those places? The laughing and the tears! And the cruel eyes studying you. My mother there?
[A foreshadowing of the film's climax.] But she's harmless! She's as harmless as one of those
stuffed birds! [literally!]
Marion: I am sorry. I only felt - it seems she's hurting you. I meant well.
Norman: (bitterly) People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues and shake their
heads and suggest oh-so-very-delicately. (He leans back and turns back into his affable self.) Of
course, I've suggested it myself, but I hate to even think about it. She needs me. (He leans
forward again.) It's not as if she were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a
little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. (He leans back, smiles, and relaxes.)
Haven't you?
Marion: (firmly) Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough. Thank you.
Norman: Thank you, Norman.
Marion: Norman. (She stands to leave his company.)

At the conclusion of their discussion, he attempts to solidify their first-name-basis intimacy, but she is only
thankful that she has learned a lesson from their talk. [Marion's admission that she has sunk to neurotic
depths ("we all go a little mad sometimes") parallels Norman's own psychotic, pitiable trap in which he is
hopelessly caught.] Marion realizes how horrible life can be when one is trapped in a situation without
escape. In the mad act of stealing her boss's money, she has placed herself in such a trap.
Benefitting from Norman's example and trapped, self-sacrificing condition, he has provided or suggested a
way of liberating salvation for Marion - and she gratefully thanks him. Regaining her sanity and rationality,
she is resolved to extricate herself from her own self-imposed "private trap back there" due to lack of money
and a frustrating romance. She will return to Phoenix to turn herself in "before it's too late":
Marion: I have a long drive tomorrow, all the way back to Phoenix.
Norman: (incredulously) Really?
Marion: I stepped into a private trap back there and I'd like to go back and try to pull myself out
of it before it's too late for me to.

Marion forgets, however, that she has signed the register with a fake name and fake home address, and now
tells Norman that her name is Crane. Norman watches her return to her cabin, and then takes another look
at the register, smirking at the false name and location. [Norman Bates' hobby, "baiting ," snaring and
trapping birds for stuffing - such as the "crane' woman from Phoenix - another legendary bird - has again
found a suitable match - and he is amused by it.]