Date of Award:

5-2011

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

English

Advisor/Chair:

Christopher Cokinos

Abstract

As Tim O'Brien advises in The Things They Carried, "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end" (76). If the war story never seems to end, then how does it manifest in future generations? In my case, as the first-born son of a Vietnam veteran, the war story has played out physically, within my body, in the form of an Agent Orange-related disability. How has my response to disability affected both the fine details and the overall texture of my life? My father also suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for several years after his return, a timeframe that happens to coincide with the first and most impressionable years of my life. How has this affected my relationships to my disability and to the world at large? Lastly, what can a chronicle of Agent Orange in Vietnam tell me about my own story?

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This work made publicly available electronically on May 11, 2011.

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