Digital Commons Network^™

Quarry Light And Other Stories, Claudia Lois Smith

Dissertations

Quarry Light and Other Stories is a collection of short stories and one novella articulating themes of violence, trauma, and sexuality. The stories in Quarry Light and Other Stories are arranged according the theme, movement, and tonality. Although they can stand alone, the stories are meant to be read interdependently. The collection is accompanied by a critical introduction.

Edith Wharton: Vision And Perception In Her Short Stories, Jill Sneider

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In Edith Wharton's short stories, vision and perception play key roles in stories pertaining to marriage and divorce, artists and writers, and social and personal values.

Who Cycles Into Our Valley, Benjamin M. Solomon

English Theses

The twelve stories in this collection chart a course between the United States and India. Some are set wholly in one country, while others form a bridge between the two. Uniting them is a shared attention to memory, isolation, and loss. In their own idiosyncratic ways, each of the characters in these small fictions is struggling for human connection in a hostile and lonely world.

On Our Way Out: And Other Stories, Benjamin Champlin Wright Morris

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

On Our Way Out and other stories is a collection of short fiction banded together with themes of the darkened strange, the missing and the moving, and a sense of place. The characters in these stories try to claw their way to newfound identities, whether it's through a financial transaction, saving a life, or putting a body in the ground. An action with a result is what's needed in these characters' lives. Though, often, the results are not intended. Despite the oddity inherent in these stories and characters, there is something familiar about their plight as ordinary people, something in …

Tiny Animals Made To Do Unnatural Things, Ashley Mary Siebels

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The stories in this collection revolve around a central theme which is expressed by my titleTiny Animals Made To Do Unnatural Things. All my characters feel guilt about decisions and experiences that haunt their past. In the present, they have come to a crossroads and are trying to decipher between what they were made to do as in vocation and evolution and what they are being made to do by the authorial pressures that loom over them (e.g. bosses, parents, loan officers, prison guards.)

In this way, my thesis pivots on the word made. Made (or to make) has many …

Talk Me Down: A Selection Of Short Stories, Katie Elyce Freeman

Masters Theses

In Talk Me Down, Katie Elyce Freeman offers a selection of short stories that follows young characters in their pursuit for self-satisfaction. At times her characters are uncertain of their talents, at times wracked with guilt over immature mistakes; but their highly detailed, sensory worlds often deliver a needed coincidence, a sliver of light to lead their way.

Renovations And Other Stories, Amanda Rene Lager

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Renovations and Other Stories is a linked collection of ten fiction stories that examines the ways by which women renew or restore themselves. The collection is set in the imaginary city of St. Clair, South Carolina, a town balancing historical accuracy with the sensational tourist industry; Carolinians who trace their ancestries back to the American Revolution with suburban newcomers; and the notion of cherishing the past with moving forward. Many of the characters struggle with identity, whether it is regional or feminine individuality. The protagonists must challenge self-image when faced with situations that make them reconsider their places in their …

Mother Of Three Drowns Children And Other Stories, Laura L. Stubbins

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A collection of short stories depicting fictional characters facing what is absent from their lives.

The Boys' Republic, Jonas Mueller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The young men in The Boys’ Republic live in a world that is continually falling apart. Their houses collapse into sinkholes, forest fires carve out chunks of their towns, plague spreads through their communes, the money runs out on the construction project where they work. This decay mirrors their own collapsing identities, as they are forced to question their mastery of nature, their nostalgia for their youth, their relationships with others, and the value of masculinity itself. Drawing on the work of writers like Dennis Cooper, Flannery O’Connor, and Benjamin Percy, The Boys’ Republic depicts men in the midst of …

Let Them Eat Cake, Courtney Yeager

Honors Theses

My mother has always said she belongs in the kitchen. Sure, she voted in presidential elections and wasn’t surprised when I, as a seventh-grader, mentioned that Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted all moms to find a real job. But whenever I glanced up at my childhood home, tucked neatly into the hillside towering over town, I envisioned my mother dicing zucchini or fingering the grout between counter tiles as she pored over hardback cookbooks, turning pages as delicately as she would crack an egg.

Midnight In A Perfect World, Jaron Serven

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

What follows is a collection of short stories dealing with the experience of growing up in America during the Digital Age, written in a creative fictional method. The stories directly deal with the themes of coming to terms with the past, friendship, facing tough choices, maintaining love in an unloving world-overall, expressing the look and feel of what it is like to be young, to see through the eyes of a generation inheriting a world of questionable morals. The collection pulls from numerous resources in the genre of the contemporary American bildungsroman, but also from much literary criticism dealing with …

Real Live Girls And Other Stories, Emily Karen Jones

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This is a collection of short stories.

Lonesome And Maybe With Other Problems, Daniel Townsend

All ETDs from UAB

Lonesome and Maybe with Other Problems is a collection of short stories thematically centered on isolation and masculinity set in East Texas. These stories aim to explore the contradictory desires for social connection and unique identity. Through the use of humor and digressive narrative style, the stories capture the characters' struggles to maintain their independent identities while overcoming obstacles that keep them from ever fully participating in their families and communities. Each of these characters, though realized to the reader, must confront how they will become the men they perceive themselves to be.