Graduation Year
2010
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.F.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
John H. Fleming, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Ira Sukrungruang, M.F.A.
Committee Member
Rosalie M. Baum, Ph.D.
Keywords
fiction, suburbia, coming of age, loss, guilt
Abstract
These collected stories are a narrative exploration of a collective life in middle‐class suburbia. Here the reader is introduced to a troop of characters who share a community but yet they are adrift in the atmosphere between identity and memory. At times, as in “When to Lie” and “Afraid of the Question” we see conflict arise when the suburban religious dogma alters character identity, leaving behind haunting memories and scar tissue. Memory and identification play an important roll when, as in “Rx” the protagonist is faced with the sudden loss of his family as he struggles to keep their memories alive—without their memory he is no longer a father or a husband. Whether the characters are looking to re‐engage in society after being done wrong, as is the case in “Playing the Game” or coming to terms with sudden loss, afflicting memories play an important role in each narrative.
Scholar Commons Citation
Miller, James R., "The Waiting Unknown: Stories" (2010). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3440
