Date of Award

5-2005

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Advisor

Elaine Ford

Second Committee Member

Constance Hunting

Third Committee Member

Naomi Jacobs

Abstract

The following thesis is a novel. It tells the story of a young man named Gage Gray. The story begins a few minutes before January 1,2001; not only does this date begin the new century and new millennium, but it is also Gage's birthday, the day he turns 21. From this point, the novel follows Gage through the next year of his life. He completes his last semester of college, graduates, and begins working in an office. He dates a girl, falls in love, and has his heart broken. He moves away from the comfortable environment of his university home, surrounded by friends, and experiences life in a new environment where he feels inadequately prepared for adulthood. Essentially, the novel is a coming-of-age story, showing a young person as he makes the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood. There is an oft-mentioned loose relationship between plot and character in fiction-they are inversely proportional: the more important character is, the less important plot, and vice versa. As the title may suggest, Gage Gray is a charactercentered novel. The plot is fairly episodic, as Gage progresses from one place to another, interacting with different people. The key objective of this story is to portray the character of Gage Gray as convincingly as possible. Ideally, the novel's reader will find him interesting enough to continue from chapter to chapter in order to find out what he thinks and does next. This novel is not intended as didactic, something that will teach people some great truth about the human condition, rather it's goal is simply to reflect something of what it is like for one person at a certain stage of life, and perhaps the reader will be able to see something of him or herself in Gage.

Download

Files over 10MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share