Who To Watch Out For
Abstract
The central problem in a creative thesis is to demonstrate an understanding of the creative process by actually creating works of art. These works must show the writer's command of contemporary techniques in such traditional matters as plot, characterization, narration, and theme.^ The results of making the stories that constitute this creative dissertation are primarily the stories themselves. But even more than in the making of a critical dissertation, the results include a sharpened awareness of the creative process for the writer herself. She is obliged to create valid stories, just as any other writer must. But she must also do so under academic circumstances that intensify both critical detachment and self-consciousness during their creation.^ This heightened sensitivity to the making of works of art is obviously of great value academically, both in the selection of works to teach and in the presentation of these works to students.^ Who To Watch Out For is a collection of twelve loosely connected short stories that explores the desire to forsake individuality for the comfort of a group. In this collection, the groups to which characters gravitate are somewhat unconventional: The Sabian Assembly, Wiccan covens, Kalpullis, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Each character attributes to his/her chosen group characteristics it does not necessarily possess, in order to compensate for a lack of self-knowledge and a fear of individual perception and action. Also examined in several stories is the power, nearly magical in nature, of the past and of memory, and how this affects the characters' present desires to connect, however self-destructively, with others. ^
Subject Area
Literature, Modern|Literature, American
Recommended Citation
Penny Ann Newbury,
"Who To Watch Out For"
(1996).
Dissertations and Master's Theses (Campus Access).
Paper AAI9702081.
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dissertations/AAI9702081