This paper is a collection of three short stories. A short preface discussing the origin of the tales precedes the stories. Fractions and Equations is the story of a love triangle. In this tale, the development of love between two people is told. There is no resolution in the tale. The second story, The Sailing of the Fantasy Cafe, tells of the operation of a book shop at Christmas time. The main characters in the story are described and several important incidents are also related. The tale ends with a Christmas party. The final story, And Penance More Must Do, deals with the life of a young teacher. The story begins in Africa and ends in America. During the course of the story the mind and heart of the main character are probed in detail.

The following study is divided into five parts, The first part examines the use of myth in Eguus, Various interpretations of myth are presented and their relationship to Equus is explored. Chapter II covers the relevance of psychology to the play. R, Do Laing's comments on normalcy as the goal of society and Carl Jung's theories on the subconscious are both important to a study of Equus. The philosophy of Nietzsche helps explain some of the ideas in Equus, and Chapter III summarizes his contributions to the study. Chapter IV is a close look at the symbolism of the horse, and Chapter V deals with the yearning for transcendence as discussed by early German Romanticists, Equus is a romantic statement incorporating the fields of myth and psychology.

Stevie Smith's treatment of her two major themes of God and death reveals her seriousness as a poet; although she earned a reputation as a writer of comic verse, she is rather a serious writer employing a comic mask. This thesis explores her two, dominant themes, which reveal her inability to synthesize her views about both subjects. In religion, she proved to be a doubter, an atheist, and a believer. Her attitude toward death, though more consistent, is nonetheless ambiguous, particularly regarding suicide. Smith always considered death as a god, and her examination of both the gods of Christianity and of Death was exhaustive. She never developed a single view of either theme but proved to believe in several conflicting ideas at once.

The play Eguus presents a series of dialectics, opposing forces in dramatic tension. The multi-leveled subjects with which Shaffer works confront each other as thesis and antithesis working towards a tentative synthesis. The contrasts include the conflict of art and science, the Apollonian and Dionysian polarity, and the confrontation of Christianity and paganism. Modern man faces these conflicts and attempts to come to terms with them. These opposites are really paradoxes. They seem to contradict each other, but, in fact, they are not mutually exclusive. Rather than contradicting each other, each aspect of a dialectic influences its counterpoint; both are necessary to make a whole person.

In William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha novels, a group of characters exists who possess three common characteristics--a closeness to mankind, a realization of the tragedy in life, and a positive response to this tragedy. The term beneficent is used to describe the twenty individuals who possess these traits. The characters are divided into two broad categories. The first includes the white and black primitives who innately possess beneficent qualities. The term primitive describes the individual who exhibits three additional traits--simplicity, nonintellectualism, and closeness to nature. The second group includes characters who must learn the attributes of beneficence in the course of the novel. All the beneficent characters serve as embodiments of the optimism found in Faulkner's fiction.

This study is an inquiry into the relationship between the contemporary American writer's understanding of American reality and his attempt to convey this reality by the use of an insane first-person point of view character. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the insane narrator's point of view not only recreates the feeling of absurdity through the disjointed point of view of the madman, but also points to the absurdity in contemporary American life. The first part of this study analyzes the narrators in Henderson the Rain King, The Bell Jar, and Lancelot. The second part uses A Fan's Notes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Breakfast of Champions to discuss the problems that arise from the use of an insane narrator.

This novel of the Vietnam War examines the effects of prolonged stress on individuals and groups. The narrative, which is told from the points of view of four widely different characters, follows an infantry company through three days and two nights of combat on a small island off the coast of the northern I Corps military region. The story's principal themes are the loss of communication that contributes to and is caused by the background of chaos that arises from combat; the effect of brutal warfare on the individual spirit; and the way groups reorganize themselves to cope with the confusion of the battlefield. The thesis includes an explication of the novel, explaining some of the technical details of its production.

Most Richardson scholarship mentions that Clarissa shares affinities with drama; however, with the exception of three books and a few articles, there is no comprehensive study of the drama's effect upon the composition of the work. No one work deals with all areas in which drama affected the novel, and no one work deals exclusively with Clarissa. The drama influenced the composition of the novel in three ways: First, tragedy and theories of neoclassic tragedy exerted an influence upon the work. Richardson himself defended his novel in terms of eighteenth-century views of tragedy. Secondly, Restoration and early eighteenth-century plays affected the plot, character portrayals, and language of Clarissa. Lastly, Richardson adapted techniques of the stage to the novel so that Clarissa, though an epistolary novel, achieves the manner, if not the effect, of the theater.

This paper explores the dialectical concept of love in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov through Katerina and Grushenka, the heroines, and Dmitri Karamazov. Dostoyevsky's dialectic is most accurately described by the terms Eros and Agape, as defined by Denis de Rougemont in Love in the Western World. Chapter One examines the character of Katerina and establishes that although her love is ostensibly Agape, her most frequent expression of love is Eros. Chapter Two establishes that Grushenka's most frequent expression of love is Agape although ostensibly Eros. Chapter Three demonstrates how each woman personifies a pole of Dmitri Karamazov's inner conflict, and then traces his development with regard to his relationship to each woman.

At the beginning of the novel, the main character, J. D. Alfred, is a young, immature college freshman, naive both socially and sexually. In the initial chapter, however, he encounters a "mysterious" dark-haired girl, older than himself and very experienced. Near the middle of the novel J.D. begins a quest, not quite sure what it is he is looking for. As he moves from place to place, he discovers more and more about his family, his friends, the world around him, and the woman with whom he has become entangled, discoveries which he chooses to ignore until too late. He is left with only one choice to make, whether to die a fiery death, or live to deal with problems which he is not yet equipped to handle.

Shelby Hearon's four novels--Armadillo in the Grass, The Second Dune, Hannah's House, and Now and Another Time--are unified by the common elements of the vital female character and her quest for selfawareness, self-integration, and fulfillment. This study examines the four novels chronologically in order to understand the development of this character and the themes which are common to all four. The concluding chapter offers an assessment of Hearon as a novelist whose work is both universally lasting and relevant.

Through careful analysis of sound in Walden with some attention to related works, this study demonstrates the three major facets of Thoreau's use of sound: first, an unusual aural sensitivity illustrated by his many varied sound images, which add concreteness and experiential immediacy; next, the depth of meaning that sound has as his metaphysical symbol in perception and expression of spiritual truth; finally, his effectiveness with such auditory devices as rhythm, alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia to achieve a poetic quality-. Of equal importance to Thoreau are the sounds of his writing and the sounds in his writing. Realizing the reality, depth, and texture Thoreau gives his prose through his remarkable treatment of sound increases one's appreciation of Walden as art and of Thoreau as literary artist.

In The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence departs from traditional literary techniques, going below the level of ego consciousness within his characters to focus on the elemental dynamic forces of their unconscious minds. Using three generations of the Brangwen family, Lawrence traces the rise of consciousness from the primal unity of the uroboros through the matriarchal epoch and finally to full consciousness, the realization of the self, in Ursula Brangwen. By correlating the archetypal symbols characteristic of three stages of consciousness outlined in Erich Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness and The Great Mother with the three sections of the novel, it is possible to show that Lawrence utilizes the symbols most appropriate to each stage.