Date of Award

Fall 1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

Creative Writing

Committee Director

Janet Peery

Committee Member

Sheri Reynolds

Committee Member

Jeffrey H. Richards

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E64 M39 1999

Abstract

In each life, the past inevitably impinges upon the present, at once helping to form and threatening to destroy the fragile structure of the psyche called identity. With a multitude of influences, the past functions to alter ephemeral perceptions of the self and to shape an identity that is often incompatible with and abhorrent to who we think we are. This collection of five short stories examines the processes of reconciling the past with the present and of discovering the resulting social, sexual and spiritual identities.

Yet, more importantly, the stories also explore people in their present moments, aching to connect with another person but hindered or prevented from doing so by the omnipresent past. Set between the late 1960s and 1990s, in a world in which references, role models and absolutes have ceased to exist, the stories trace the evolution of loss and acceptance of a self that is, as often as not, at odds with what we might choose to be.

Ultimately, these stories seek to define varying degrees of wholeness in an inarticulate world, a world in which definitions are insufficient to describe the experience of self discovery, whatever form the self chooses or is forced to take.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/e0wy-pf12

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