All That Becomes a Man
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In each life, the past inevitably impinges upon the present, at once helping to form and threatening to destroy the fragile structure of the psyche called identity. With a multitude of influences, the past functions to alter ephemeral perceptions of the self and to shape an identity that is often incompatible with and abhorrent to who we think we are. This collection of five short stories examines the processes of reconciling the past with the present and of discovering the resulting social, sexual and spiritual identities. Yet, more importantly, the stories also explore people in their present moments, aching to connect with another person but hindered or prevented from doing so by the omnipresent past. Set between the late 1960s and 1990s, in a world in which references, role models and absolutes have ceased to exist, the stories trace the evolution of loss and acceptance of a self that is, as often as not, at odds with what we might choose to be. Ultimately, these stories seek to define varying degrees of wholeness in an inarticulate world, a world in which definitions are insufficient to describe the experience of self discovery, whatever form the self chooses or is forced to take.
DOI: 10.25777/e0wy-pf12
Author: McAvoy, Eugene M.
Institution: Old Dominion University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6889635232
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