Publication Date
5-2023
Advisor(s) - Committee Chair
David Bell, Nancy Dinan, Trini Stickle
Degree Program
Department of English
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts
Abstract
Minds, or: How to Go All the Way Up the Mountain and Never Come Back Down is a novel-length work of fiction completed in partial fulfillment of a Master of Fine Arts degree. It could be loosely described as ‘speculative,’ as it revolves around an individual with unwanted telepathic powers. Throughout the story, our hero completely fails to do anything interesting with her powers, and is only ever concerned with a pastoral fantasy wherein she lives in the woods and speaks to no one. The work is divided into three acts. Act One is heavily expository, and chiefly concerns the protagonist’s arrival in a house in the middle of the woods, and her discovery of a drug that may cure her condition; Act Two takes place after she begins taking the drug and has to learn to exist in the world without her abilities; Act Three chronicles her mental breakdown after the drug stops working. The themes of pastoralism and transcendental thought form the main character’s desires and goals, and this verges at times on critique. The narrative questions whether a lifetime of uninterrupted silence in the pure wilderness is a feasible goal for anyone, even someone for whom the world is unbearably loud.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | Fiction
Recommended Citation
Galdi, Caroline, "Minds, Or: How to Go All the Way Up the Mountain & Never Come Back Down" (2023). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 3649.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3649