Publication Date
5-2003
Advisor(s) - Committee Chair
Nancy Roberts, Dale Rigby, Charmaine Mosby
Degree Program
Department of English
Degree Type
Master of Arts
Abstract
An Hour Before Dawn is a creative thesis in the form of a novel. It explores the social, psychological, and theological problems of the Union home front during the Civil War by focusing on the experiences of a Southern Unionist and the Ohio family whose hospitality he reluctantly accepts. The mood of the book is far from the “moonlight and magnolia” sentimentality of much previous Civil War fiction (e.g. Gone With the Wind); rather, the internal conflicts of its main characters align the story closer to the kind of individual existentialism of Cold Mountain or The Red Badge of Courage. These conflicts stem from issues of self-hate and self-righteousness, and from the larger question people in crisis situations often contemplate – that of God’s complicity in, or perhaps worse, indifference to calamities of national proportions.
The plot of the story is simple enough. A young Southern man, Teague Scott, betrays his heritage and family to join the Union Army. He loses his right leg at Antietam, and after a prolonged convalescence, stays with a doctor’s family in rural Ohio. The major character in this family is the teenage daughter, Annalea Warner, whose naïveté and piety are too extreme for her own good, as her attempts to reform the battle-scarred Teague are largely unsuccessful and lead her to question her own moral standing.
An Hour Before Dawn deals with more than the war itself; family and faith are its most important subjects. Teague’s estrangement from his own family, the longing he feels for them, and his loss of religious certainty are integral parts of his character, and Annalea’s relationship with her family, given their ostensible spiritual tightness and their more real isolation, mirrors the Northern home front’s determination to conduct life as if everything were normal.
The manner in which these characters’ stories are conveyed stems largely from childhood literary influences, documents of the time period, and modern concepts of war psychology. Interspersed fairly often through the narrative proper are excerpts from Teague’s journal, which mimic diary entries of actual soldiers and follow his experiences from boyhood, through battle, and to his introduction to the Warner household. There is also in this novel the domesticity of Little Women coupled with the stark brutality of The Red Badge of Courage, and thrown in with this admittedly odd juxtaposition is the disillusion and mental anguish of Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” and Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” for Teague seems and ancestor of the Lost Generation.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | English Language and Literature | Fiction | Literature in English, North America
Recommended Citation
Payton, Sharon, "An Hour Before Dawn" (2003). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 3413.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3413
Comments
Access granted to WKU students, faculty and staff only.
After an extensive unsuccessful search for the author, this thesis is considered an orphan work, which may be protected by copyright. The inclusion of this orphan work on TopScholar does not guarantee that that orphan work may be used for any purpose and any use of the orphan work may subject the user to a claim of copyright infringement. The reproduction of this work is made by WKU without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and is made for purposes of preservation and research.
See also WKU Archives - Authorization for Use of Thesis, Special Project & Dissertation