Date of Award:

5-2010

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Arts (MA)

Department:

English

Committee Chair(s)

Jennifer Sinor

Committee

Jennifer Sinor

Committee

Brock Dethier

Committee

Charles Waugh

Abstract

This thesis consists of a traditional introduction followed by a first-person, fictional story told in seven chapters. The story begins with the protagonist in his apartment preparing to write, a brief account of his stalling, and then his beginning to write. Those chapters taking place in the vicinity of the apartment are in the present tense and those relating past adventures are written in third person, one chapter for each adventure: Africa, sailing, and Navajo Mountain. After each adventure, the narration returns to the apartment.

This piece is the embodiment of both the vigorous internal work in search of understanding and the story of that work, told as a fictional account. The structure, therefore, mimics the journey: the dialogue between his present, cloistered searching and his past, external searching. Therefore, the combination of his solitary internal life and his failed adventures point to an urge to be involved and the awareness of his separateness, of the great solitude of human existence, to be both connected and isolated.

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2dd350ca232f05cc763f83d58a84f950

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on October 1, 2010.

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