Publication Date
4-1989
Advisor(s) - Committee Chair
Pat Carr, Karen Pelz, Joe Millichap
Degree Program
Department of English
Degree Type
Master of Arts
Abstract
In the introduction to The World of the Short Story, Kay Boyle challenges the short story writer "to invest a brief sequence of events with reverberating human significance by means of style, selection and ordering of detail, and -- most important -- to present the whole action in such a way that it is at once a parable and a slice of life, at once symbolic and real, both a valid picture of some phase of experience, and a sudden illumination of one of the perennial moral and psychological paradoxes which lie at the heart of la condition humaine." River People is my attempt to meet that challenge. It is a creation of short stories about people I know or might know, small-town, seemingly ordinary people whose characters and activities are universal expressions of truth and humanity.
The short story genre allows me to inculcate variety in form, style and character. This collection includes several points of view, limited and omniscient, objective and unreliable. It offers brief revelations and more thorough studies. It deals with the past as well as the present. Lastly, it touches the lives of the young and the aged, men and women, the respected and the scandalous, the romantic, the tragic, the realistic.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | English Language and Literature | Fiction | Literature in English, North America
Recommended Citation
Madden, Ruth, "River People" (1989). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 2567.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2567