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Lightning Flowers, Nickalus Rupert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lightning Flowers traces the psychological collapse of Waylan Dranger, an East Texas construction worker / folk artist. Waylan suffers from hallucinatory encounters with Reeve, his missing brother. Reeve often blames Waylan for his disappearance and implied death. Waylan also worries that Sam, his live-in girlfriend, will leave him before he can resolve his own increasingly erratic behavior. Largely, Lightning Flowers is preoccupied with the consequences of nostalgic thinking. Among others, the novel grapples with the following questions: What defines contemporary notions of "brotherhood"? To what extent does one's survival necessitate self-delusion? How do social stigmas inform our experience of mental …